This section comes from the end of volume 1 of Christianity and Freedom: Religion's Effort to Overcome Human Body's Innate Drive to Dominate/Lust for Power
Bossy’s moral arithmetic
Judged by impact on today’s historical research, the most
influential loss of traditional sins and virtues from the history of early
modern England is arguably John Bossy’s chapter, ‘Moral arithmetic: Seven Sins into Ten Commandments.’[1] According to Bossy, the Reformation brought
about a general change in Christian moral thinking -- both Protestant and
Catholic -- from the seven deadly sins to the ten commandments. The problem with this thesis is obvious to
anybody who has read main volume 2 of this series. As we may recall, that volume is full of
quotations from popular early modern English theologians, which described the
seven deadly sins, particularly pride, in great detail. The choice is clear: Either Bossy or the innumerable 17th
century divines who wrote the quotations totally misunderstood early modern
English Protestantism. Both cannot be
right.
The source-evidence contradicting Bossy's thesis is quite
overwhelming. Space constraints limit us
here to just a few examples: According
to publication statistics, the most popular long religious text in early modern
England was Richard Allestree’s, The Whole Duty of Man. This book went through 57 known editions
between 1640 and 1700, i.e., about 200,000 copies of The Whole Duty
circulated in England. Allestree’s main discussion of pride is on pp.
121-141. The ambition branch of pride
and its opposing virtue, contentedness, are dealt with in the following
chapter.[2]
Jeremy Taylor
(1613-1667) had impeccable credentials as a representative of the Anglican
mainstream: Bishop, Doctor of Divinity, Chaplain to the King, and one of the
most popular religious writers of the century. Taylor’s Holy Living went
through twenty known editions, i.e., about 60,000 copies, which put the book
high up on the bestseller lists. Taylor’s discussion of pride and humility
begins on page 112. The virtue of
contentedness that opposed pride's ambition branch is discussed separately on
pp. 141 ff.[3]
Measured by the total number of books published, Richard
Baxter’s (1615-1691) 301 known editions -- easily over half-a-million copies --
made him the most influential religious writer in early modern England. Baxter
was also the spiritual leader of the Non-Conformists and thus the religious
“forefather” of many modern American Protestants. Baxter’s discussion of pride
is in his "Directions against Pride and for Humility." This treatise can be found on pp. 1-61, in Volume
3 of The Practical Works of Richard Baxter: with a Life of the Author,
William Orme ed. (London: James Duncan, 1830.)
Several copies of Orme's edition are available on Google Books. [4]
Suggestion: If you look up Baxter, do browse the table of contents of Volume 3. LINK There are several other parts you will find interesting -- and drastically different from modern Christianities. In particular, Baxter’s instructions for governing thoughts and passions (pp. 172 - 329) provide a nice survey of the introspective self-analysis and its associated very exceptional self-control, which were central parts of the intensely depth-psychological variant of Christianity common in late medieval and early modern Europe. Contemporaries denoted this part of religious morality with the expression: “God’s law is spiritual and controls the heart.” (See Vol. 1 of the supplementary texts for details.) These sections of Baxter highlight the magnitude of Bossy’s mistake: His focus on the Ten Commandments totally disappears the central role that emotions and intentions had in (at least) early modern English Protestantism.
Bossy’s error may have a simple explanation. The leading early Puritan, William Perkins
(1558-1602.), wrote a book, The Art of Prophecying, which provided
detailed instructions on how to guide worldly sinners through the conversion
process. The first thing a preacher had
to do when dealing with people who were ignorant of any religion (including
children) was to teach the basics contained in the catechism. When these had been learned, the preacher was
to apply the threats of law to reveal the extent and power of sin. After the hearers had been brought to the
sight of their sins (in modern terms, had discovered their hitherto unconscious
animal urges) and began to experience the repentance and depression which
ensued from that discovery, the promises of the gospel and the details of
conversion were to be preached. However,
if backsliding was observed, then the promises of mercy were to be mixed with
renewed threats of law.
The "targeting" of course caused problems in mixed
audiences, where people were on different levels. The problem in these situations was how to
break sinners without driving the godly to an excess of desperation, and how to
comfort the godly without giving the sinners an undeserved feeling of
security. Perkins' solution to this
problem was to be so specific, that the hearers could not be mistaken about who
was meant.[5]
The most likely reason for Bossy’s erroneous view of early
modern English Protestantism -- and of all early modern Christianity -- is that
he focused narrowly on Baxter's first step, the Catechisms. As a result, he ignored the thousands of
books which discussed the law and the conversion process. From psychological perspective, it looks
like we may have here yet another example of the error-producing effects of the
narrow focus, that Richard Nisbett found in Anglo-Saxon mentality. (See p. 93 above.)
An extenuating circumstance
about Bossy's thesis is that his description about the loss of traditional sins
applies very well to modern Christianities.
For early modern England, however, Bossy’s thesis is totally false to
facts. The error is so large and obvious
as to raise the question: How could a
thesis so totally contradicted by a massive amount of irrefutably reliable
source-evidence fly, and, worse yet, how could that thesis keep flying as long
as Bossy's has? (An example of recent
perpetuation of the error can be found in The Reformation of the Decalogue: Religious Identity and the Ten
Commandments in England, c. 1485-1625, Jonathan Willis, Cambridge University Press, 2017.) Furthermore, the error is very significant,
because the oversight of the conversion process means historians have missed
early modern English Protestantism’s ability to change human nature – and thus
national character -- at a deep psychological level.
The choices are
rather troubling: Either
something is fundamentally wrong with the scientific approach to history, or we
have a great deal of inexcusably poor research.
More troubling yet, Bossy and Willis were published by Cambridge
University Press, which is widely regarded as the gold standard when it comes
to accuracy in scientific publishing. It
is difficult to avoid the impression that there may be quite a bit of tungsten
in that gold.
[1]
John Bossy: ‘Moral arithmetic: Seven
Sins into Ten Commandments’, in Edmund Leites (ed.), Conscience and Casuistry in Early
Modern Europe (Cambridge: CUP, 1988), pp. 214-234.
[2]
Richard Allestree, The Whole Duty of Man, (London: John and Daniel Eyre, 1756). I used this edition, because it is available
over the net on Google Books.
[3]
Jeremy Taylor, The Rule and Exercises of Holy Living, (Boston: Little
Brown and Company, 1864.) This edition
is available on Google Books.
[4] At least on 2024-07-30 this volume was produced by Google search: Orme Practical Works of Richard Baxter volume 3 internet archive
[5]
This is a summary of the instructions Perkins gave in The Art of Prophecying,
(London, 1607), 102-122.
