This dissertation aims to examine a group of key and influential theological writers in early modern England on the topic of truth-discernment within the church, and on the relationship of church and civil society in that discernment. The work of the Dutch Christian humanist, Desiderius Erasmus is essential to this examination, and will form the starting point for the study. Erasmus’ ideas were adapted and used explicitly by English thinkers Richard Hooker, and William Chillingworth, and had implicit although indirect influence on John Wilkins and Isaac Watts through to the mid-18 century. Each in their own way set a direction of thinking about the way to resolve a basic problem of common life: how Christians could discern the truth within divided and pluralized social bodies of Church and state both. In so doing, they had to grapple with a central social reality: if human discernment is limited, what form of corporate governance could provide space – sufficient freedom and sufficient limit or discipline – to draw or press people to seek and apprehend religious truth? The writings of these key authors are not of merely historical interest. Rather, the pressing dynamics of their context and the answers they gave – as well as the tradition of response they were a part of and developed – remain pointedly

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John McManners

Papers

Spirit and Nature. The Saint-Médard Miracles in 18 th -Century Jansenism (Book)