Whiston's Affair’
The trials of a Primitive Christian 1709–1714
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 10080259 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Edward Duffy (0000-0002-4515-5116, King's College London, corresponding author), Eamon Duffy |
| Year | 1976 |
| Volume | 27 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 129-150 |
| Publication date | 1976-04-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | The Journal of Ecclesiastical History (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0022-0469 • E-ISSN: 1469-7637 |
| Publisher | Cambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1017/s0022046900052969 |
| OpenAlex | W2061508856 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 6 |
| References cited | 3 |
Historians of the eighteenth century have written of William Whiston, if at all, with an ill-concealed smile. ‘The engaging Whiston’, that ‘most amiable of heretics’, is duly noted in every account of the development of Arianism in England, but his lunatic vagaries are kept well to the fore. Yet Whiston has some claims to serious historical attention. His heresies were considered dangerous enough to provoke the champions of both high and low-church to counter attack, and to unite the warring factions in the turbulent Convocation of 1710/11 in a concerted attempt to silence ‘this corrupter of our common Christianity’, this ‘fallen star of our church’. To Whiston, rather than to Samuel Clarke, belongs the dubious credit of having revived the Arian heresy in England, and although Clarke's less flamboyant teaching was ultimately more influential, Whiston, in converting the dissenters Joseph Hallett and James Peirce to Arian views, was indirectly responsible for the conflagration at Salter's Hall in 1719, and the spread of Unitarianism in English dissent. The story of the discovery of ‘Primitive Christianity’ and the prolonged persecution which Whiston's attempts to propagate his new gospel provoked is not widiout elements of farce, but there is a serious side to the episode. The abortive attempt to cite Whiston before the ‘court of Convocation’ in 1711, and his subsequent prosecution in the Court of Delegates, were seen by churchmen as yet another demonstration of the impotence of the Church of England in the face of her enemies, and by latitudinarians and unbelievers as a dangerous attempt on the liberties of protestant Englishmen. Like the Sacheverell trial, to which it forms a pendant, the Whiston affair was, while it lasted, a cause célèbre , and casts further light on the eighteenth-century debate on the place and function of the Church in Society
Aesthetics · Christianity · Dissent · Eucharist · Gospel · Heresy · Persecution · Political science · Silence · Theology · American Constitutional Law and Politics · Classics · History · Law · Multicultural Socio-Legal Studies · Philosophy · Religious studies
Eighteenth-Century Reactions to Newton’s Anti-Trinitarianism
Decoding Robert Greene's Critique of Newton's Natural Philosophy through His Analysis of Locke's Epistemology
Excommunication in Postrevolutionary England, 1689–1714
Primitive Christianity revived
William Whiston, Isaac Newton and the crisis of publicity
Newtonianism and the enthusiasm of Enlightenment
| Unique citing works | 6 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,12 |
| Citation span | 1977 - 2025 (49) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 6 |