Enthusiasm

Ronald A. Knox

Description

Enthusiasm, first published in 1950 by Ronald A. Knox, is the end product of thirty years of research and inspiration. In his perceptive and learned study Knox presents the personalities and religious philosophies of the various types of enthusiasts of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries: the monatists; donatists; anabaptists; Quakers; Jansenism; quietism; methodism; and other movements.

Sujets

• Religion
• Christianisme
• 18th Century
• 17th Century
• Modern
• HISTORY
• Philosophie et théologie
• Quakers
• Religious Society of Friends
• Modern history
• Jansenism
• Christianity
• Obermodern-Zutzendorf
• Société religieuse des Amis

Informations

• Publié par: University of Notre Dame Press
• Date de parution: 30 septembre 1994
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780268161217
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 50 Mo

Extrait

Enthmiam
A CHAPTER IN THE HISTORY
OF RELIGION Enthuiam
A CHAPTER IN THE HISTORY
OF RELIGION
WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO THE
XVII AND XVIII CENTURIES
R. A. KNOX
UNIVERSITY OF NOTRE DAME PRESS
NOTRE DAME, INDIANA 46556 Copyright © 1950 by the Earl of Oxford and Asquith
First published 1950 Oxfrd University Press
First published in paper 1961
Reprinted by Christian Classics, Westminster, Maryland 1983
Reprinted in Collins Flame Classics, 1987
University of Notre Dame Press edition 1994
Library o Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Knox, Ronald Arbuthnott, 1888-1957.
Enthusiasm : a chapter in the history of religion : with special
refrence to the XVII and XVIII centuries / R. A. Knox.
p. cm.
Originally published: New York : Oxford University Press, 1950.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-268-00932-5
1. Enthusiasm-Religious aspects-Christianity. 2. Church
history-17th century. 3. Church history-18th century. I. Title.
BR112.K5 1994
270.7-dc20 94-12761
CIP
@ Te paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements
e the American National Standard for Information Sciences-Permanence e Paper
for Printed Librry Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1984. To
EVELYN WAUGH
HERE is a kind of book about whch you may say, almost
without exaggeraton, that it is the whole of a man's
lterary life, the unique child of his thought. Other writings The may have published, on this or that occasion; please
God, the work was not scamped, nor was he inderent to the
praise and the blame of his critics. But it was all beside the mark.
The Book was what mattered-he had lived with it all these years,
fndled it in his waking thoughts, used it as an escape fom axiety,
a solace in long joureys, in tedious conversations. Did he fnd him­
self in a library, he made straght fr the shelves which promised
light on one cherished subject; dd he hit upon a telling quotaton,
a just metaphor, an adroit phrase, it was treasured up, in miser's
fashion, fr the Book. The Book haunted hs day-reams" like a
guilty romance.
Such a thing, fr better or worse, is this book whch fllows. I
have been writing it fr thirty years and a little more; no year has
passed but I have added to it, patched it, rewritte it, in the tme tat
could be spared fom other occupations. Those fiends who have
asked 'what I was doing' all this time need ask no longer; the secret
is out. Those who have expressed surprise at my possessing odd
fagments of hstorical information w understand now how they
got there-it all came into the Book. Those who cherished the belef
that I. was writng a reftation of all the heresies must be prepared
fr a disappointment; I have only dealt with certain selected points
of view, they were not exactly heresies, ad I have not refted them.
To be sure, when the plan of the Book wa frst conceived, all
those years ago, it was to have been a broadside, a trumpet-blast, a
end of controversy. It was to f up the picture outlined in Bossuet' s
Variations, in Moehler's Symbolik; here, I would say, is what happen
inevitably, if once the principle of Catholic unity is lost! All this
confusion, this priggishness, this pedantry, ths eccentricity and
worse, fllows directly fom the rash step that takes you outside the
fld of Peter I All my historical fgures, Wesley himself icluded, v DF.DICA TION
were to be a knd of rogue ' gallery, a awf wag against
ilumsm. But somehow, in the writing, my whole treatment of
the subject became derent; te more you got to know the men,
the more huma dd they become, fr better or worse; you were
more concered to fd out why they tought as they did than to
prove it was wrong. The result, I am afaid, is a hotch-potch; I shall
be blamed fr not defending Pascal more,. or Nayler less. But I could
not go on fr ever revising my estmates; as it is, I have completely
rewritten fve out of the frst six chapters, so istinctively does the
mid quarrel with its own judgements of ten or ffteen years back.
A hotch-potch, put together as best I could, between
tasksmastering my authorities in trains, or over solitary meals, taking
notes on rough pieces of paper ad losing them, reading chapters
aloud to patent critcs, talkig over the implications of this or that
movement with my frends. It is not to be supposed that t hap­
hazard process of compositon wi have justifed my selection of
material, or produced a literary unity; but how it endears the pages
to their author! What varied memories he can use fr book­
markers! Of hours spent in private libraries-the library at Beaufrt,
burt down since, where I quarried in Fleury; the library at Keir,
where I ran across Heworth Dixon's Spiritual Wives; the library
at Aldenham, with those six volumes of Gregoire, and the old copy
of Lady Huntingdon's Lif, uncut by Acton! Of books that have
pased through my hands, bought, taken out, or borrowed, fom
the eleven volumes of Bremond down to the more modest ambit of
Noake's Worcester Sects! Of evengs with undergraduate societes,
where I have tried out a chapter here and there, uder the guise of a
lecture! Do not doubt that one in my position fels, once again,
the delicious tremors of frst authorship; frgets his bibliography,
and ranks in his own mind as homo unius libri.
Strange, that a thg which is so much part of oneself should go
out into the world, ad lie in shop-windows, ad be handled by
reviewers! Yet ths venture of paterty must be made, in the hope
that there is some truth here worth the tellg; or, if not that, tinder
at least to catch the sparks of another man's fre.
R.A.K.
MBLLS, 1949 CONTENTS
I. THE NATURE OF ENTHU SIASM I
II. THE CORINTHIANS' LETTER TO ST. PAUL 9
m. THE MONTANIST CHALLENGE 25
IV. DONATIST AND CIRCUMCELLION 50
V. THE UNDERWORLD OF THE MIDDLE AGES 71
NOTE ON THE DESCENT OF THE ALBIGENSES 90
VI. THE PATTERN OF MEDIEVAL HERESY 2 9
VI. THE ANABAPTISTS AND THE REFORMATION II7
vm. GEORGE FOX AND SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY
PROTESTANTISM 139
NOTE ON THE PRE-HISTORY OF QUAKERISM 168
IX. JANSENISM: THE SETTING 176
X. J ANSENISM: ITS GENIUS • 204
XI. QUIETISM: THE BACKGROUND .. 23 I
XI.THE DOCTRINE 260
. xm. MALAVAL, PETRUCCI, MOLINOS 288
XIV. MADAME GUYON AND THE BATTLE OF THE
OLYMPIANS • 319
NOTE ON ANTOINETTE BOURIGNON 3 2 5
3 6 XV. THE FRENCH PROPHETS • 5
XVI. THE CONVULSIONARIES OF SAINT-MEDARD 372
XVII. THE MORAVIAN TRADITION 389
XV. A PROFILE OF JOHN WESLEY 422 v CONTENTS
( ) XX. THE PARTING OF FRIENDS 1
) XX. THE OF FRIENDS (11 83 4
XX . WESLEY AND THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 13 5
XX. SOME VAGARIES OF MODERN REVIVALISM 549
xx. THE PHILOSOPHY OF ENTHUSIASM 8 57
BIBLIOGRAPHY 2 59
INDEX • 597
459 t
t
I
THE NATURE OF ENTHUSIASM
!AVE called this hook 'Enthusiasm', not meaning thereby to
name (fr name it has none) the elusive thing that is its subject.
I have only used a cant term, pejorative, and commonly mis­I applied, as a label fr a tendency. And, lest I should be accused
of setting out to mystify the reader, I must proceed to map out, as
best I may, the course of ths inquiry. There is, I would say, a re­
current situation in Church history-using the word 'church' in the
widest sense-where an excess of chari threatens wity. You have t
a clique, an elite, of Christan men and (more importantly) women,
who are trying to live a less worldly lif than their neighbours; to be
more attentive to the guidance (directly flt, they woud tell you) of
the Holy Spirit. More and more, by a kind of ftali , you see them
draw apart fom their co-religionists, a hive ready to swarm. There
is provocation on both sides; on the one part, cheap jokes at the
expese of over-godliness, acts of stupid repression by unsympathetic
authorities; on the other, contempt of the half-Christian, ominous
refrences to old wine and new bottles, to the kernel and the husk.
Then, while you hold your breath and tum away your eyes in far,
the break comes; condemnation or secession, what diference does
it make? A fesh name has ben added to the list of Christianities.
The patter is always repeating itse not in outline merely but in
detail. Almost the enthusiastic movement is denowced as
an innovation, yet claims to he preserving, or to he restoring, the
primitive discipline of the Church. Almost always the opposition
is twofld; good Christian people who do not relish an eccentric
spirituality fnd themselves in wiwelcome alliance with worldlings
who do not relish ay spirituality at all. Almost always schism begets
schism; once the instnct of discipline is lost, the movement breeds
. rival prophets and rival coteries, at the peril of its inter uni
Always the frst fervours evaporate; prophecy dies out, and the
charismatic is merged in the institutional. 'The high that proved too
high, the heroic fr earth too hard' -it is a fgal melody that run
through the centuries. t
t
t
2 THE NATURE OF ENTHUSIASM
Ifl could have been certain of the reader's goodwill, I would have
called my tendency 'ultrasuperaturalism'. For that is the real
character of the enthusiast; he expects more evident results fom the
grace of God than we others. He sees what efects religion can have,
does sometimes have, in transfrming a man's whole lif and out­
look; these exceptional cases (so we are content to t them) are
fr him the average standard of religious achievement. He will have
no 'almost-Christians', no weaker brethren who plod and stumble,
who (if the truth must be told) would like to have a fot in either
world, whose ambition is to qualify, not to excel. He has befre his
eyes a picture of the early Church, visibly penetrated with super­
natural infuences; and nothing less will serve him fr a model.
Extenuate, accommodate, interpret, and he will part company
with you.
Quoting a hundred texts-we also use them, but with more of
embarrassment-he insists that the members of his socie , saved
members of a perishing world, should live a life of angelic purity, of
apostolic simpli