Literature and the Encounter with God in Post-Reformation England by Michael Martin (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Literature and the Encounter with God in Post-Reformation England by Michael Martin Rajiv Thind Martin, Michael, Literature and the Encounter with God in Post-Reformation England, Farnham, Ashgate, 2014; hardback; pp. 230; 4 b/w illustrations; R.R.P. £60.00; ISBN 9781472432667. Michael Martin’s compelling study gives us phenomenological profiles of selected individuals who made attempts to ‘reach’ and encounter God in post-Reformation England. The book’s five chapters discuss the religious lives and writings of John Dee, John Donne, Sir Kenelm Digby, Henry and Thomas Vaughan, and Jane Lead, who all subscribed to fluid religiosities that defied distinct labels. In the post-Reformation seventeenth century, independent religious quests gave rise to new religious groups such as Ranters, Fifth Monarchists, Philadelphians, and many other antinomian groups. Such groups were not particularly concerned with understanding God through traditional theological studies, but rather with knowing God through personal and intuitive explorations. The first chapter introduces us to the religious life of John Dee (1527–1609). Dee had a serious interest in medieval mysticism, but he stayed away from the doctrinal and theological debates of the Reformation and Counter-Reformation. Dee’s theology ‘attained a surprising mutability between Protestant and Catholic, orthodox and heterodox modes of religious inquiry’, yet it would be misleading to compare it to the newly conceived Anglican via media (p. 27). In Chapter 2, on John Donne (1572–1631), Martin argues that Donne’s ‘religious aesthetic is grounded in humility’ (p. 48). Donne also stressed the communal aspect of religion and the significance of the Established Church. Yet his writings on religious ecstasies drew heavily on Catholic mysticism and vocabulary. Sir Kenelm Digby (1603–65) is the subject of Chapter 3. Martin describes his religious methodology as ‘the technological and the Catholic’ (p. 87). Digby was profoundly affected by his wife’s death and devoted his life [End Page 391] to the science of palingenesis, which was always intermixed with the idea of resurrection. The fourth chapter covers the Rosicrucian mysticism of Henry and Thomas Vaughan. Such mysticism proposed ‘that God can be discerned in nature’ via scientific study of the natural world ‘informed by scripture’ (p. 109). The last chapter focuses on Jane Lead (1624–1704) who led the evangelical Philadelphian Society. Lead’s writings were focused intensely on the Bible, especially ‘the Book of Revelation’s eschatological intensity’ (p. 155). Again, like the other figures studied in this book, Lead’s religious beliefs exhibit cross-confessional syncretism as evident by her support for the heretical (for Protestants) idea of Purgatory. The heterogeneous religiosities of these subjects owe much to their individual characteristics and lives, but, as Martin concludes, they were also ‘informed by their cultural and historical moments’ (p. 185). Rajiv Thind The University of Queensland Copyright © 2015 Rajiv Thind