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Handout #182 |
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A jaundiced view of Interregnum sects |
| Richard Baxter (1615-91 A.D.) was a saintly
clergyman who came to be a champion of Presbyterianism during the Civil
War. It is interesting to see how much he deplored the more extreme sects
which emerged; modern historians have suggested that the Ranters were more
a product of the worried imaginations of people like Baxter than a real
identifiable group! The 'Familists' mentioned were an earlier sectarian
group. The Quakers would survive as a much less aggressive denomination,
even though Baxter thought that many of them were 'Papists' (i. e. Roman
Catholics) in disguise.
The third sect were the Ranters. These also made it their business, as the former, to set up the light of nature under the name of Christ in Men, and to dishonor and cry down the Church, the Scripture, the present ministry, and our worship and ordinances; and called men to hearken to Christ within them. But withal they conjoined a cursed doctrine of libertinism, which brought them to all abominable filthiness of life. They taught as the Familists, that God regardeth not the actions of the outward man, but of the heart, and that to the pure all things are pure (even things forbidden). And so, as allowed by God, they spoke most hideous words of blasphemy; and many of them committed whoredom commonly, insomuch that a matron of great note for godliness and sobriety, being perverted by them, turned so shameless a whore that she was carted in the streets of London...And that was the fourth sect, the Quakers, who were but the Ranters turned from horrid profaneness and blasphemy to a life of extreme austerity on the other side. Their doctrines were mostly the same with the Ranters. They make the light which every man hath within him to his sufficient rule, and consequently the Scripture and ministry are set light by; they speak much for the dwelling and working of the Spirit in us, but little of justification and the pardon of sin, and our reconciliation with God through Jesus Christ; they pretend their dependence on the Spirit's conduct, against set times of prayer and against the sacraments, and against their due esteem of Scripture and ministry; they will not have the Scripture called the Word of God; their principal zeal lieth in railing at the ministers as hirelings, deceivers, false prophets, etc., and in refusing to swear before a magistrate, or to put off their hat to any, or to say 'You' instead of 'Thou' or 'Thee ", which are their words to all... Many Franciscan friars and other Papists have been proved to be disguised speakers in their assemblies, and to be among them, and it's like are the very soul of all these horrible delusions...The Autobiography of Richard Baxter, Dent, Rowman and Littlefield 1974, 73-4. |
