The Covenantal Quietism of Tobias Crisp

Abstract

As England's public upheavals of the mid-seventeenth century were turning ominous, the antinomian preacher Tobias Crisp set his own stamp upon tempestuous times.Christ Alone Exaltedcomprises a series of sermons that Crisp delivered, “in or neare London,” in the early 1640s. The collection oozes discontent. Excrescences theological and devotional, Crisp had decided, needed to be removed, for they were imperiling vulnerable souls. Christian truths were now contending with “brethren” too smitten by the “righteousnesse of the Law” to stand in any but an adversarial relationship with “the free grace of God which is by faith.” Crisp offered a reparative blade. He repaired by cutting and thrusting, and in so doing sought to make amends for a host of puritan horrors. And for all the quietism that informed his alternative covenantal vision, Crisp did not operate softly. He had targets in his sights; he would dislodge from its place of security in the hearts and minds of the brethren a world of religious thought and action. The seethingly indignant responses of his critics testify to the bang with which Crisp had arrived. Crisp delivered a combustible mix of acrid polemic and nonconforming theology. He let it be known that an overly legalized soteriology had precipitated a pandemic of religious troubles; a desiccated, formulaic piety was smothering the spiritual life out of the gospel message. In short, Crisp was issuing a vigorous challenge to the legitimacy of a pietistic tradition that was overly elaborated and destructive of souls.