Jane Lead and the Philadelphians - part two
II. The Philadelphian Society
At their height the Philadelphians may have numbered no more than about one hundred English adherents. According to various versions of Richard Roach’s retrospective manuscript history of this small religious community, which was probably written in the first quarter of the eighteenth century, the Philadelphians were not a ‘peculiar sect’ or party. Rather, while the term was a particularly appropriate description of certain ‘spiritual people’ in England, indeed of a blameless, weak community treated with contempt even by their fellow Christians, it signified more generally a belief in ‘the coming of Christ to his glorious kingdom’. Besides this strong millenarian aspect, Philadelphian teaching emphasised the fulfilment of prophecies and full completion of divine promises – including the conversion of the Jews to Christianity (an event commonly regarded as an essential precursor to the second coming of Christ). Furthermore, they anticipated the conversion of Muslims and unbelievers to Christianity as well. In addition, Philadelphian belief stressed the importance of primitive Christianity as practised by the Apostles; peace, love and Protestant church unity; the Reformation of Manners; charity; and the ‘absolute necessity’ of private and public revelation, which superseded insufficient human learning, and on which subject Francis Lee had written a very large but unfinished manuscript treatise.
Landesbibliothek zu Gotha, Chart. A 297; papers concerning Jane Lead the Philadelphians formerly in the possession of the Lutheran theologian Ernst Salomon Cyprian (1673–1745)
Comparing themselves with an ancient Jewish sect known as the Essenes, who were best prepared among the Jews to receive Christ’s message because they were more conversant with the deeper mysteries of religion, Roach traced the Philadelphians’ origin to a group that had flourished during the English Revolution. Established before September 1650 at Bradfield, Berkshire this spiritual community centred on the rector there Dr John Pordage (1607–1681), his wife Mary (c.1608–1668), whom he had married for ‘the excellent gift of God’ he had discovered in her, and a woman named Mary Pocock (fl.1649–fl.1691). Later they were joined by Thomas Bromley (1630–1691) and Edmund Brice (c.1632–fl.1694), two members of Oxford University.
Dr John Pordage (1607–1681)
Others who became convinced of the ‘extraordinary power & operation of the Spirit’ and joined themselves and waited with them were Philip Herbert (1619–1669), fifth Earl of Pembroke and Joseph Sabberton (fl.1643–fl.1668), a former Parliamentarian army officer who became Pembroke’s steward after the Restoration of the Stuart monarchy. They were, however, repeatedly denounced by the nonconformist ejected minister Richard Baxter (1615–1691), who considered Pordage and his ‘family’ to be the principal English followers of the Lutheran mystic Jacob Boehme (c.1575–1624). Baxter alleged that they ‘pretend to hold visible and sensible Communion with Angels’, distinguishing between good and evil spirits by sight and smell. Although he maintained that – like the Diggers – they also espoused community of goods, Baxter conceded that – unlike the Ranters – their tenets did not extend to polygamy (community of women). Indeed, these Behmenists were said to abhor sexual relations and, advocating chastity as an alternative, apparently objected to the lawfulness of marriage. Thomas Bromley, for example, died unwed and childless.
Richard Baxter, Reliqiuae Baxterianae, ed. Matthew Sylvester (London, 1696), part 1, p. 77
In August 1673 or 1674, five or six years after the death of his wife, Pordage became acquainted with Lead who was then widowed. Lead recalled how, after ‘diligent searching and enquiry’, she had rejoiced on learning of this ‘holy Man of God’ and the other guiding lights of his community. Pordage became for Lead ‘a special instrument to encourage, impel and assist’ her devotions, while he had an equally high regard of Lead’s spiritual abilities, prizing her ‘extraordinary gift’ of revelation. Accordingly, they agreed ‘to wait together in prayer and pure dedication’ in expectation of God’s coming. Following Pordage’s demise in December 1681 Lead contributed a preface to the posthumous publication of two of his writings issued under the title Theologia Mystica (1683), but was unable to prevent several people from falling away from their society. Indeed, during the 1680s Lead was part of a dwindling and ineffectual circle – despite the publication of her two earliest works, The Heavenly Cloud Now Breaking (1681) and The Revelation of Revelations (1683). Their number had declined still further by the beginning of the 1690s.
But it would be a mistake to think that Lead persevered alone. For besides visiting an unnamed ‘distressed Christian’, Lead wrote of her ‘fellow Waiters and Believers’, who walked with her in ‘unity of Love and Life’. All the same, by this time a number of people who had been connected with Lead were dead. Yet just as she was negotiating the transition from insignificance to obscurity, her star unexpectedly began to rise. This is largely because Lead’s writings were to be circulated in German translation within the Dutch Republic.
While living at Lady Mico’s almshouses near St Dunstan’s church, Stepney Lead’s next publication appeared. Entitled The Enochian Walks with God (1694), it contained certain revelations which Lead felt impelled to issue before she died (she was now seventy). Crucially, this work marked her public rejection of a fundamental Calvinist belief – predestination – and adoption of the doctrine of the ‘Universal Restoration of all Mankind, with the fallen Angels’. In other words, Lead now believed not only in the salvation of all humanity but also the salvation of all the angels who had fallen from heaven including, presumably, Satan. Lead was to claim that although she had heard of this teaching she had received it neither from the ‘Wisdom of men’ nor ‘according to tradition’ but rather by divine revelation in 1693. And while Lead may have largely formulated her conception of universal redemption independently over several years it should be noted that she had forebears. For various ideas concerning the possibility of universal redemption had been espoused during the English Revolution by, among others, the Digger leader Gerrard Winstanley (1609–1676); the self-proclaimed King of the seven nations and Recorder to the thirteen tribes of the Jews, TheaurauJohn Tany (1608–1659); the Ranter associate Richard Coppin (fl.1659); and the Welsh preacher William Erbery (1604–1654). Indeed, from the early eighteenth century together with these figures Lead would be incorporated within a Universalist tradition that stretched back to Origen of Alexandria (c.185–c.253), Clement of Alexandria (c.150–c.215) and Gregory of Nyssa (c.335–c.394).
From autumn 1695 a private week-day prayer meeting was initiated at Lead’s newly rented property in Hoxton Square, Shoreditch (London). It is unclear if this Hoxton gathering pre-dated what Roach called the ‘long rooted & mother meeting’ of the Philadelphians at Baldwin’s Gardens in St Andrew’s, Holborn. All the same, he indicated that the Baldwin’s Gardens meeting was held at the home of Mrs Ann Bathurst [neé Jurin, neé Pickering] (1636–1704) on Sundays for the ‘general resort of those who were of this way’. At some point Mrs Bathurst combined with Mrs Joanna Oxenbridge (d.1709). She was the impoverished widow of Clement Oxenbridge, who had managed the Post Office during the Protectorate and had also been an associate of the Leveller and conspirator John Wildman (1622/23–1693). Both women were said to have received ‘great & wonderful experiences’ and Roach considered them two of the ‘principle persons in carrying on the spiritual work’.
London, Westminster and Southwark (1690)
Detail showing Baldwin’s Gardens in 1690
About the end of March 1697 there appeared the first volume of Theosophical Transactions by the Philadelphian Society. Edited by Lee and Roach, this short-lived journal consisted of ‘conferences, letters, dissertations, inquiries’ and the like for the advancement of ‘Piety & Divine Philosophy’. While its title partly recalled the Royal Society’s Philosophical Transactions, the sub-title ‘Acta Philadelphica’ suggests a parallel with the Acts of the Apostles. Yet its publication caused a stir resulting in the Baldwin’s Gardens meeting becoming overcrowded as ‘so many flocked’ there. This necessitated moving to a larger place, namely Hungerford Market. Situated near Charing Cross between the Strand and the River Thames, this was also the site of a French church. Their first meeting was held there on Sunday, 18 July 1697. It was attended by Lead and her family as well as by Caleb Gilman (1670–fl.1708), who noted the fact in the fly-leaf to his copy of Boehme’s Aurora.
Evidently the Philadelphians hoped to attract a large gathering to the Hungerford meeting since they publicised it through the circulation of an announcement. Among the variety of curiosity seekers and scoffers who attended was the former Baptist turned Quaker Richard Claridge, who recorded his impressions of a meeting held on Sunday afternoon, 15 August 1697. Claridge noted that when he entered the men’s hats were off and that an unnamed man was preaching in a ‘very careless and lazy posture’. Another speaker was a woman called Cresilla, who to Claridge’s annoyance was fashionably dressed. She talked much of ‘the spiritual flesh and blood of Christ, pretending it was a great mystery’. Moreover, Claridge observed that:
they held universal redemption, pretended to a special dispensation of the Spirit, were against water-baptism, and outward breaking of bread; but were for justification by Christ’s imputed righteousness; and that though the guilt of sin was taken away in believers, and the power and dominion of sin much subdued, yet corruptions and imperfections remained during life.
The Hungerford meeting endured about six months subjected to, on the one hand, ‘great opposition’ and violence from what Roach disparagingly termed the ‘rude multitude’ and, on the other, increasing internal divisions that eventually tore it apart. Beforehand, however, Lead and her family had absented themselves on the pretext that it was ‘inconvenient’ to travel such a ‘great distance’ from Hoxton. Instead they obtained licence to gather at Westmoreland House, near Bartholomew Close (St. Bartholomew the Great); a site formerly occupied by a Presbyterian congregation. One Sunday, probably 29 August 1697, a ‘very great concourse of people’ came. Among them were some boys and ‘rude fellows’ who caused trouble, yet there was also a ‘sober sort of company very attentive and inquisitive’. They outnumbered the Philadelphians, who could be counted on one hand: Jane Lead; Francis Lee and his wife Barbary Lee; a woman using the pseudonym Hephzibah [2 Kings 21:1] – possibly Mary Sterrell (fl.1702), an author of Huguenot background; and ‘the good honest man’ – perhaps Heinrich Johann Deichmann (1665–fl.1703) of Hanover, afterwards secretary of the Philadelphian Society.
Although the audience at Westmoreland House was said to have been ‘more favourable & civilized’ the volume of disturbances gradually increased. So Lead’s group was driven to relocate, firstly to Twisters Alley near Bunhill Fields (St. Giles-without-Cripplegate); then after a ‘considerable time’ to Loriners’ Hall (which stood on the corner of Aldermanbury Postern and London Wall, facing the north end of Basinghall Street); and finally – sometime after Easter Sunday 1699 – back to Hoxton. Again, it is noteworthy that Loriners’ Hall was an established venue for nonconformist preaching. It was used, for example, by a Particular Baptist congregation in 1699 and subsequently by an Independent congregation in 1704.
To recap, the Philadelphian Society emerged openly at a particular moment: after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes (1685), the Glorious Revolution (1688–89), the Toleration Act (1689), and the lapse of the Licensing Act (1695). The Protestant Prince of Orange become William III of England had defeated the Catholic James II in Ireland and suppressed Jacobite risings in Scotland, while the Nine Years’ War (1688–97), which pitted a coalition lead by William known as the Grand Alliance against the territorial ambitions of Louis XIV, was shortly to be concluded with the Treaty of Rijswijk. More broadly, this period has been viewed by some scholars as the beginning of an English Enlightenment, a so-called ‘Age of Reason’ brought into being by certain interconnected factors. Among them was the formal creation of a Royal Society, a body populated by experimental scientists who attempted to achieve public respectability through their apparent scepticism, empiricism, affected disinterest and use of non-sectarian language. Isaac Newton’s Principia Mathematica had been published in 1687 forcing open-minded readers capable of understanding its contents to reconsider their views of the universe. Added to this were the contributions of Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) and his followers who, if Jonathan Israel is to be believed, provided the intellectual backbone of the European Radical Enlightenment. Another disputed strand of Enlightenment rationalism was anti-Trinitarian thought, which arguably contributed to the gradual development of an alternative reasonable form of Protestantism through its hostility to Papal authority, Catholic dogma and superstition against a backdrop of growing anticlericalism and interest in the historical Jesus. Stripped of its mystery this naked Christianity meshed with an acceptance of the cessation of miracles while dismissing the pretensions of those tarnished with the brush of enthusiasm.
At first glance the Philadelphians do not fit comfortably within this framework. Indeed, their belief in the continued communication of higher knowledge through visions and revelations, apocalyptic expectations, privileging of individual religious experiences, engagement with prophecy, theosophy and mysticism, not to mention their reverence for female figures and secret heterodox rituals, collectively positions them as an alternative to some scholarly conceptions of the Enlightenment. More so, with the advent of a body of scholarly literature that regards the Enlightenment as exclusionary. Yet it simultaneously situates them at the heart of what Clarke Garret dubbed the Mystical Enlightenment. This is not a paradox given how elastic and comprehensive our understanding of the Enlightenment has become.
Another context was the proliferation of religious societies. Roach’s associate the educator Charles Bridges (1670–1747) estimated that there were about fifty in London. These were mainly concerned with eradicating ‘vice and debauchery’, with some also instrumental in founding free schools for poor children. Significantly, the establishment of these Charity Schools fostered links with likeminded Pietists at Halle – a university Lee had visited on his travels. Indeed, Lee would anonymously translate and probably provide the preface to the English version of Pietas Hallensis (1705), an account of an orphanage and other charitable institutions in Saxony by the educator and social reformer August Hermann Francke (1663–1727). Accordingly the Philadelphian Society was preceded by the Society for the Reformation of Manners (1690), but anticipated the Societies for Promoting Christian Knowledge (1698) and for Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts (1701).
Then there is 1697. The year had been carefully selected since it was based on the extensive apocalyptic exegesis of two biblical commentators that can be connected with the Philadelphians, namely Thomas Beverley (d.1702) and Edward Waple (1647–1712). An Independent minister and prolific author, Beverley had predicted that, in Warren Johnston’s words, ‘the fall of the beast, the resurrection of the two witnesses, and the advent of Christ’s millennial kingdom on earth would all begin in 1697’. Specifically, Beverley envisaged Philadelphia as partly arising out of a combination of Protestant sufferings in France and an undefiled remnant of Protestant churches. This would lead to a settlement ‘upon the pure Laws and Ordinances of Christ’: the ‘Philadelphian state’. The appointed time of ‘Christ’s coming to judge the world’ was Monday, 23 August 1697 and it is no coincidence that on that very day the Philadelphian Society finalised their constitutions at Westmoreland House. Although Beverley was forced to issue a public apology when his prophecy failed, Roach recalled that Beverley had sought out and conferred with the Society when they openly declared and warned the world of the coming ‘Kingdom of Christ’. And while it is difficult to determine the extent of this collaboration, it should be noted that through their network of international correspondents the Philadelphians facilitated the publication of several of Beverley’s treatises in German translation at Frankfurt.
Similarly, in his annotations on each chapter of Revelation, Waple predicted that about 1697 there would be ‘some more than ordinary appearance’ of the ‘Philadelphian State’. He too incorporated recent events such as the revocation of the Edict of Nantes and the capture of Savoy by a Waldensian force in 1690 within his apocalyptic chronology, reckoning that 1697 would mark both the end of ‘the Beasts Months’ and the ‘Days of the Witnesses’ (Revelation 11:3).
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Just as Lead’s autobiography of 1696 had been crafted to reassure readers of her respectability, so Lee and Roach were the main movers in fashioning an image of irenic conformity and social standing for the Philadelphians at large. Thus in a later published account Roach portrayed a meeting of the Philadelphians’ precursor society headed by Joseph Sabberton as an ‘eminent’ assembly frequented by ‘Gentry and Persons of Quality’, including a number of women. Besides this claim to social respectability, Philadelphians stressed how they differed from Quakers. Denying that they were a new sect or faction, they did not challenge the authenticity of the Bible and outwardly conformed by hearing the word preached in Protestant churches. In addition, they acknowledged the authority of civil government and did not have a reputation for disturbing church services. They were ‘not for turning the World upside down’ as some had misrepresented them. Nor were they ‘so silly as to place Religion in Thouing and Theeing, in keeping on their hats’.
Hostile observers, however, readily compared Philadelphians with Quakers. One thought them derived from the ‘same enthusiastical stock’ and so alike as to be almost indistinguishable, noting that some Quakers attended Philadelphian meetings. Another complained that the Philadelphians were but:
a young Sprout from the Quakers, as very much resembling them in many Particulars; for they have no Ministers, no Sacraments, no Rule of Faith. Men and Women Preach indifferently, and rave extravagantly, being very ignorant, and accordingly uttering whatsoever occurs next to their Enthusiastic Imaginations.
A Huguenot traveller and subsequent supporter of the French Prophets was more sympathetic, observing that this lately sprung sect of ‘Mystical Theologists’ were popularly classed as Quakers, and ‘not without reason’, although their recently published and ‘very obscure’ writings suggested a different conclusion. Nonetheless, this was a minority view. More commonly the comparison was extended as in an attack on the ‘delusions and errors’ of another female visionary Antoinette Bourignon (1616–1680) and ‘all other Enthusiastical Impostures’, whose author insisted that English Quakers and Philadelphians were ‘of the same kidney’ as foreign Quietists and Pietists, with all standing ‘upon the same foundation’. Indeed, some polemicists even incorporated the Philadelphians within a catalogue of ‘innumerable sects’ reminiscent of Thomas Edwards’s Gangraena of 1646: Socinians, Anabaptists, Quakers, Muggletonians, Antinomians, Seekers and Familists.
While the ‘little Company’ that made up the Philadelphian Society was understandably concerned with how contemporaries perceived them – particularly through the circulation of printed statements portraying them as a peaceable, reputable non-sectarian body – their public identity conceals some affinity with the Quakers. Although Lead intimated and Roach stated that the Philadelphians had superseded the Quakers, they used the same printers. Moreover, Lee was a nonjuror (Quakers did not swear oaths) and he openly acknowledged that while Philadelphians differed from Quakers ‘as to their external Habits, or Customs’, they agreed with them as to the ‘Internal Principle of a Light within’ – at least when this ‘Divine Principle’ was correctly explained. Nor, in a spirit of accommodation, did he assert the validity of baptism in general or of infants in particular. As for communion, Lee hinted that the Philadelphians had a great deal to say about spiritually eating Christ’s flesh and drinking his blood which could not be declared to non-initiates.
More damaging still was the allegation that Lead envisaged herself as the woman clothed with the sun (Revelation 12:1), indeed as the grandmother of a new Christ. Evidence is partly supplied in Philadelphian correspondence intercepted by the Archbishop of Canterbury’s agents from at least June 1697. Together with other documents these reveal an extensive transnational correspondence network; the adoption of new spiritual names; the existence of a heterodox religious ritual known as the love feast; and association with disreputable figures including an alchemist, a confidence trickster, a bigamist and a murderer. That and previous connections with the Behmenist prophet and martyr Quirinus Kuhlmann (1651–1689). Even so, it should be emphasised that while the Philadelphians were maligned as enthusiasts, they were not the victims of religious persecution. On the contrary, having offered a public apology for his involvement with the Philadelphian Society to the Archbishop of Canterbury, bishops and clergymen of the Church of England on 23 August 1697 Roach was merely required to respond to five written queries. Among them was the question whether the ‘Revelation to which Mrs Jane Lead pretends in her first & second volume of the Fountain of Gardens be true?’ In addition, Roach was asked how he could minister publicly to his congregation at St Augustine, Hackney while simultaneously ministering privately with women preachers. Roach responded at length in November 1697 and though he was subsequently expelled from his fellowship at St John’s, Oxford in March 1698 – ostensibly for non-residence but more likely for frequenting conventicles – he remained rector of Hackney until his death.
Lambeth Palace Library, London, MS 942 no. 141, answers by Richard Roach to five queries concerning his Philadelphian beliefs (2 November 1697)
In the third and final part of this series we will examine the impact of Jane Lead’s death upon the Philadelphians and the demise of the remnant of this small if fascinating religious group.