Hearing God’s Voice in the English and Scottish Reformations

Abstract

Reformed Protestants professed to hold that the age of miracles had passed, but this was largely a polemical stance. The devotional experience of the miraculous—in particular, the experience of hearing God’s voice—provides a different perspective. British Protestants aspired to and claimed to hear God, but while English reformers usually hedged these claims in metaphorical language and heard generic and conventional messages, many of their Scottish counterparts claimed much more vividly prophetic experiences. Some of the Scots also claimed to receive prophetic dreams and even visions. The article argues that this contrast is less extreme than it seems, for the English sources—especially those originating from times of crisis, such as the 1550s, 1630s or 1640s—also reveal implicit doctrines and expectations of the miraculous which are very close to those of the Scots, merely couched in more careful terms. However they described the experience, Reformed Protestants remained convinced that they were truly hearing the voice of God.