Nathaniel Bacon and Francis Spira: the presbyterian and the apostate

Turnbull Library Record, Volume XVIII, Issue 1, 1 May 1985, Page 33

Nathaniel Bacon and Francis Spira: the presbyterian and the apostate

BRIAN OPIE

Simply noting the fact that, in the space of about 300 years, the life of the Italian apostate Francesco Spira was of sufficient interest in the English-speaking world to be offered to the reading public at least 50 times, is by itself a spur to speculation and inquiry. Copies of various editions of the story contain annotations by nineteenth century collectors summarising what is known about the work (awareness of the number of editions seems to grow through the century) and these often reflect puzzlement about the reasons for its existence and popularity, particularly that of the version compiled by Nathaniel Bacon and first published in 1638. 1 One annotator, Alexander Jessupp, in a copy of the 1657 edition held at the Bienecke Library of Yale University, went about to clear up confusion about the identity of Nathaniel Bacon and then asked the question to which I intend to address myself in this paper and which he left unanswered: ‘What possible motive could the author have had in “compiling” it?’

Although Bacon claims to provide an answer in his preface, it simply raises more questions, as being the prime source of evidence from which a possible motive may be reconstructed. First, though, it will be useful to summarise the pertinent details of Bacon’s own biography. He came from a family with a long history of active engagement in law and government, with vigorous protestant connections showing a puritan tendency. His father, Edmund Bacon, was a son of Sir Nicholas Bacon, Lord Keeper under Queen Elizabeth and half-brother to Sir Francis Bacon. Nathaniel was born in 1593, admitted to Gray’s Inn in 1611, and called to the bar in 1617. He was active in the affairs of the Eastern Association, became one of the members for Cambridge University of the Long Parliament in 1645, and thereafter sat in all Parliaments to his death in 1660. He became Recorder for Ipswich in 1643 and, after the establishment of the Commonwealth, first an Admiralty judge and then Master of Requests to Cromwell. Throughout his life he was also much involved in religious matters, both in Gray’s Inn and

through the attempts to reconstruct the Church of England according to presbyterian principles. Other evidence helps sketch out a cultural context which at least makes Bacon’s interest in Spira’s story comprehensible, even if his decision to publish a version of it suggests a special personal significance. Existing manuscripts of Bacon’s version indicate a date of composition before 1628 and circulation amongst an educated, theologically literate group which may be further particularised by the sharing of puritan and parliamentary sympathies. That Spira’s story was current amongst puritan clergy who were contemporaries or near contemporaries of Bacon is shown by references to it in works by Perkins, Preston, Sibbes, William Gouge and Robert Bolton, which seem to assume by their typical brevity that readers or hearers already possessed a knowledge of at least its main outlines.

The subject of the biography, a lawyer named Francesco Spira of Citadella, near Padua, became a celebrity amongst Protestants in the mid sixteenth century. After becoming prominent in his profession and wealthy (by his own confession) by unscrupulous means, he became interested in protestant teaching, read avidly and was convinced of its truthfulness; he made his convictions public and was soon required to present himself in Venice for examination. Although he prepared himself to resist the pressures which he knew would be applied to him by the ecclesiastical authorities, he did submit and signed a recantation, which he was required to repeat publicly.

After the first recantation he heard a voice which said, ‘Spira, what dost thou here?... take heed that thou heapest not sin upon sin, lest thou repent when it will be too late.’ At his second recantation the voice was adamant: ‘Thou wicked wretch, thou hast denied me... hence Apostate, bear with thee the sentence of thy eternal damnation.’ 2 Convinced that he was indeed an apostate from the truth and had no hope of salvation, he refused to take any action to maintain his life, affirming that he had been rejected by God and was, even before death, one of the damned. His circumstances rapidly became a matter of public knowledge, and his residence in Padua, where he had been taken in case the combined resources of medicine and theology could in any way achieve his recovery or alter his conviction of his damnation, became a place of resort. He engaged in passionate debate with the theologians, turned his face to the wall when a priest tried using the ritual of exorcism, and died absolutely convinced of his damnation.

From the beginning Francesco Spira’s apostasy was a matter of international interest. The eye-witness accounts of his despair, published in 1549 almost immediately after his death, were written by

two Italians, Pier Paolo Vergerio, a bishop and papal diplomat, and Mateo Gribaldi, a lawyer, both of whom subsequently converted to protestantism; Sigismund Gelons, a Pole; and Henry Scrimgeor, a Scot who made his residence in Geneva. These accounts were collected together and published in Basel in 1550, in what became the definitive source of knowledge about Spira’s apostasy, in a volume edited by another Italian convert to protestantism, Celio Curio. Gribaldi’s account bore an uncompromising preface by Calvin underlining the ways in which Spira’s death demonstrated the truth of protestant teaching about the core doctrines of predestination, election and reprobation; it was this version alone which was translated into English by Edward Aglionby and it was therefore the version in which Spira’s story was available to English readers during the Elizabethan period. From what Bacon says about his sources in the preface to his version, it would appear that he derived his Relation from the 1550 collection of documents. He acknowledges the existence of Aglionby’s translation and notes that he has ‘heard’ it is a translation of only one version but says he has not been able to obtain a copy.

I have already suggested that a group similar in disposition and education to these earlier reformers, concerned to advance a reformation in religion which also has political implications, can be identified as potential readers for Bacon’s version. Some other information about Bacon’s view of his likely, or preferred, readership can be obtained from the preface. Firstly, Bacon addresses himself to the question of authenticity, and places particular stress upon the number of accounts and the fact that they were written by men of‘several Nations, and some of the Romish Religion, being all of them Spectators of this Tragedy’. The view of this life history as a tragedy is followed up a little later when he imagines a questioner requiring to know ‘what moved me to compile this Treatise’. He replies not in a directly personal way but through an injunction, ‘that it should teach them fear and reverence’. He both identifies a typical response to the story (‘among all those that come to see him, few or none return unshaken’) and implies through it that a worthy reader/spectator will have this response as a measure of his worth, since it is not merely a matter of fellow-feeling but a matter of spiritual discernment, both into oneself and into the fundamental doctrines of protestant religion. The work is, after all, as much a treatise in the sense of a doctrinal text as it is an historical narrative, since the critical issues are mental not physical and the means of approach to them are through the language of biblical text and doctrinal exposition and debate. Hence the stress in the preface on the authority of the eye-witness accounts, which derives not only from actual presence at the events

but from the religious and intellectual qualities of those who wrote their reports, who are affirmed by Bacon to be ‘holy and learned’. Bacon’s own contribution has nothing to do with the substantive issues of the story, but this does not prevent him from claiming some part in the final achievement of the work. The value he has added to the original documents is that of narrative consistency, ‘so as those [discourses] which under several writers were before counted several, are now by my endeavours reduced into one intire Historie, connexed by due succession of time and occasion, as punctually as could be aimed at’. This statement is both a clear affirmation of a principle of composition and a declaration of that aspect of the work which he is offering to his reader as both his distinctive contribution and achievement. He does not say why he has endeavoured to create ‘one intire Historie’, but instead takes it for granted that there is a part, at least, of his readership who will both share this assumption about the proper way of writing a lifehistory, and who will be capable of expressing an informed judgement on his success. 3

In other words, the preface identifies the intended reader of the work as one who is capable of making judgements of a literary and a theological kind, the latter in relation to issues of a most critical and profoundly disturbing nature. A brief and yet vivid indication of what being an apostate means as Spira experiences it can be gained from the following quotations from the work itself and then from Robert Bolton’s Instructions for the Right Conforting Afflicted Consciences (1631).

I perceive said Spira, that I call on him to my eternal damnation; for I tell you again, it is a new and unheard of example, that you find in me. If Judas (said they) had but outlived his days, which by nature he might have done, he might have repented, and Christ would have received him to mercy; and yet he sinned most greviously against his Master, which did so esteem of him, as to honour him with the dignity of an Apostle, and did maintain and feed him. He answered, Christ did also feed and honour me, neither yet is my fault one jot less then that of his, because it is no more honour to be personally present with Christ in the flesh, than to be in his presence now by illumination of his holy Spirit; and besides, I deny that ever Judas could have repented how long soever he had lived; for grace was quite taken from him, as it is now from me.

O Spira, said they, you know you are in a spiritual desertion; and must therefore not believe what Satan suggests, he was ever a Lier from the beginning, and a meer Impostor, and will cast a thousand lying fancies into your mind, to beguile you withal; you must rather believe those whom you judge to be in a good estate, and more able to discern of you than yourself: believe us, and we tell you that God will be merciful unto you. O here is the knot (said Spira) I would I could believe, but I cannot. Then he began to reckon up what fearful dreams and visions he was continually troubled withal: that he saw the Devils come flocking into the Chamber, and about

his Bed, terrifying him with strange noises; that these were not fancies, but that he saw them as really, as the standers by: and that besides these outward terrors, he felt continually a racking torture of his mind, and a continual butchery of his Conscience, being the very proper pangs of the damned wights in Hell. 4

Bolton’s description of the condition of those experiencing the anger or judgement of God elaborates vividly what Bacon calls the ‘racking torture of mind’:

Alas! When a poor polluted wretch, upon some special illumination by the word, or extraordinary stroke from the rod, doth once begin to behold Gods frowning face against him, in the pure glass of his most holy law; and to feele divine justice by an invisible hand, taking secret vengeance upon his conscience; his heavie heart immediately melts away in his breast, and becomes as water. He faints and fades, both in the strength of his body, and stoutnesse of his mind. His bones, the Pillars and master-timber of his earthly tabernacle, are presently broken in pieces, and turn’d into rottennesse : His spirit the eye and excellency of his soule, which should enlighten and make lightsome the whole man, is quite put out, and utterly overwhelmed with excesse of horrour and flashes of despaire. O this is it, which would not onely crush the courage of the stoutest sonne of Adam, that ever breathed upon earth; but even breake the back of the most glorious Angell, that did ever shine in heaven, should he lift up but one rebellious thought against his Creator!... This extreamest of miseries, a wounded spirit is tempered with such strong ingredients of extraordinary fears that it makes a man a terrour to himselfe, and to all his friends. .. Besides the insupportable burthen of too many true and causefull terrors, it fdls his darke and dreadfull fancy with a world of fained horrors, gastly apparitions, and imaginary hells, which not-with-standing, have reall stings, and impresse true tortues upon his trembling and wofull heart. It is empoysoned with such restlesse anguish, and desperate paine, that though life be most sweet, and hell most horrible, yet it makes a man wilfully to abandon the one, and willingly to embrace the other, that he may be rid of it’s rage. Hence it was, that Judas preferred an halter and hell, before his present horror. That Spira said often (what heart quakes not to hear it?) that he envied Cain, Saul, and Judas: wishing rather any of their rooms, in the dungeon of the damned, than to have his poore heart so rent in pieces with such raging terrors and fiery desperations upon his bed of death... None can take the true estimate of this immeasurable spiritual misery, but bee that can comprehend the length and breadth of that infinite unresistable wrath which once implacably kindled in the bosome of God, burnes to the very bottom of hell, and there creates the extremity and endlessnesse of all those unexpressible torments, and fiery plagues, which afflict the devils and damned soules in that horrible pit. 5

It is important to regard this description not as the simple assertion of theological commonplaces but as drawing upon direct experience of others’ desperation which occurred together with the conviction that they were no longer among the elect and that God had entirely withheld his grace from them. When Bacon comments on the value of‘Extraordinary Examples of Divine Justice’, saying that Spira’s experience must warn us ‘to take heed of backsliding... and not to dally with conscience, an Hell on Earth, if justly incensed; more to be feared than the Spanish Inquisition’, and hopes

that his reader will ‘take good, and no hurt, by the reading of this terrible Example’/’ we should not think him to be exaggerating the value of what he is offering his reader. Whether or not Bacon himself actually experienced such a crisis of conscience, built into his understanding of Spira’s circumstances and torments is an acceptance of their reality as Bolton evokes it. The fascinating implication is, of course, that Bacon, when he made the translation and, later, when it was published, seriously envisaged the possibility that he and others like him would be called to account for their convictions, and might succumb to the pressure to conform, against conscience, thus falling into the desperate condition of apostasy as exemplified by Spira.

I want now to give some indication of what Bacon’s other publications tell us about his attitudes and commitments. In broad terms, they reflect the confluence of historical, legal and religious interests applied to questions about the constitution of the state, its proper government, and the place of the individual within it. By concentrating on the individual case, in A Relation , Bacon shows the state in operation but at a distance through one of its representatives (in this instance, Giovanni della Casa, author of Galatea and the sonnets which were such an influential model for Milton, and described as ‘one that wanted neither malice... nor craftiness to effect his malicious purposes’). 7 This state is shown exercising all its power to make him act against his conscience and deny the truth. For Bacon, of course, in a protestant context, to see the Church of Rome acting in this manner is simply to have one’s expectations fully confirmed, although the example has most unsettling implications when all the local parallels are drawn.

It is, however, in his other publications that Bacon develops his view of the state and strongly asserts the pertinence of understanding the past as a prime means of interpreting the present. A work which is both professional and innovative in these respects is his Annals of Ipswiche, published in 1654 and subtitled The lawes, Customes and Government of the Same. Collected out of the record bookes and writings of that Towne. It is professional in that it is a product of his position as Recorder, to which he was elected in 1642, and innovative in the sense that the city now had what it had never before possessed, a collation and interpretation of the records and documents which defined its history and legal integrity.

It was another work of this kind which both made Bacon’s reputation as a political and legal historian and perpetuated it into the late eighteenth century. In 1647 he published An Historical Discourse of the Uniformity of the Government of England. The First Part. From the First Times Until the Reign of Edward the Third. Just as with the first edition of Spira, this work was anonymous. It was not until 1651

that both the author and the purpose of this book were clearly stated on the title page, by the publication of the second part, entitled The Continuation of an Historical Discourse of the Government of England, Until the End of the Reign of Queene Elizabeth. With a Preface Being a Vindication of the Ancient Way of Parliaments in England. By Nath. Bacon of Grays Inn, Esq. However, anyone who chose to go further than the title page of 1647 would have found a piece entitled ‘To Consideration’ in which Bacon (even if he did not identify himself) made clear the purposes of the work. He says the book had its beginnings in a ‘private debate concerning the right of an English King to Arbitrary rule over English Subjects as Successor to the Norman Conqueror’ and that it is being offered as ‘an Idea for them to consider, who doe mind the restitution of this shattered frame of policy’. The reader he evidently has in mind is one who is well read, in a position to influence the direction of society, and willing to

assess present circumstances in the light of relevant knowledge (which may be new) about the past. Bacon is careful not to give his analysis an absolute authoritativeness but instead describes it as a ‘small modell’ or ‘Map’ which will assist the reader to a ‘right apprehension of the true nature’ of the English nation. In particular he stresses its status as ‘discourse’ and its function to affect the way judgements are made and hence actions determined upon. By going to antiquity and presenting a view of the origins of government in England through a narrative woven out of the existing records, he endeavours to protect his discourse from error. The opposing method which, he claimed, was used by the apologists for the monarchy, is vigorously defined in these terms: ‘Ambition hath done much by discourse and action to bring forth Monarchy out of the wombe of notion, but yet like that of the Philosophers stone the issue is but wind, and the end misery to the undertakers.’ Against any theory or proposal for a system of government which gives disproportionate power to one of its parts he would affirm that ‘the utmost perfection of this nether worlds best government consists in the upholding of a due proportion of several interests compounded into one temperature’. On this basis, and an appeal to ‘[Him] that knoweth the secrets of all mens hearts’, Bacon affirms that his ‘aime in this Discourse is neither at Scepter or Crozier, nor after popular dotage, but that Justice and Truth may moderate in all’. 8

How far Bacon was successful in his aim can, in one respect at least, be gauged by the subsequent fortunes of his book which appeared to at least one annotator to be written on ‘violent Republican principles’. In the Dictionary of National Biography entry for Bacon it is said that the 1665 edition was suppressed and the printer of the 1676 edition prosecuted. A censored version apparently was printed in 1682 but not published until 1689. It was not

until the edition of 1739 that the 1647 text was restored and the omissions identified by bracketing in the text, this edition being reprinted in 1760.

The seriousness of Bacon’s claim that he sought ‘Justice and Truth’ is borne out in his other publications and in a pamphlet skirmish in late 1646 with which he is associated, which together offer impressive evidence of his firmness of purpose and clear comprehension of the realities of political life. In 1646 he and another member of the House of Commons were identified as the authors of An Ordinance... For the Preventing of the Growing and Spreading of Heresies. The ordinance identified three groups of heresies according to their seriousness and the kinds of punishment to be inflicted upon anyone found guilty of espousing them. Very broadly speaking, the document identified, as the truth which the authors sought to defend, Christian doctrine as defined by protestant interpretation of the Nicene Creed and the presbyterian system of church government; and it specified as the means of defence the application of the criminal law. Publication of the Ordinance was quickly followed by four replies, three anonymous and one by Richard Overton, and these in turn were followed by A Vindication of a Printed Paper in which the anonymous author replied to these criticisms. The form of the Vindication was dictated by one of the anonymous pamphlets—in fact by John Goodwin —entitled Some Modest and Humble Queries (London, 1646) and printed by Matthew Simmonds for Henry Overton. Just as the critics stressed an interpretation of the Ordinance which saw it as the Presbyterian clergy using two Members of Parliament as a front to advance their interest, so the author of A Vindication saw the undermining of the magistrate’s authority in both civil and ecclesiastical affairs as the chief aim and consequence of the critics’ arguments.

What is fascinating about this exchange is the way it defines a critical point in the experience of men like Bacon who, in the process of negotiating the difficult transition to full parliamentary government and a fully reformed church, discovered that their whole achievement was under threat not only from episcopal and catholic interests but from more radical protestant interests as well. Possessing political power they sought to use it in defence of religious doctrine even if this meant applying the same pressures to those with whom they differed as, for example, the Catholic Church had applied to Spira. This analogy is, of course, fully apparent to the critics of the Ordinance (Overton describes it as ‘a Most Romish Inquisition ordinance’) 9 and is directly countered in the Vindication. Among the range of points made and issues identified, two affirmations in the Vindication have particular pertinence to our understanding, if not of Bacon directly, at least of that group

to which he so clearly belongs. Firstly, challenged with the view that Luther would have been found guilty if judged by the terms of the Ordinance , the writer of the Vindication asserted a limited doctrine of the evolution of truth: ‘in the beginning of the Reformation... there had not been such meanes of conviction, nor such a clearing or settling of truth as there is among us specially in the fundamentall Doctrines, the contrary to which are threatened with death. ’ Secondly, replying to the objection that the Ordinance would make even the entertaining of certain opinions punishable, the writer of the Vindication says: ‘No man is punishable for his meere mistake in matters of great consequence, as that he will not forbeare to publish his mistake, for the infection of others, and the mischiefe of their soules, and to the mine, or at least miserable disturbance of the Church of God.’ 10

By having a principal role in defining the terms of the Ordinance Bacon shows himself accepting both the responsibility, and the problems, which attend the possession of political power. If to think correctly is a crucial element in the stability and security of the state, then the state evidently has a fundamental interest in what its members think in so far as they seek to persuade others to their point of view. As Bacon puts it, the state is charged with the protection of its members ‘in matters of greatest consequence’. In this he shows himself consistent in a context of ideological conflict which is perceived to have as its ultimate terms, salvation or damnation for the individual, reformation or destruction for the nation.

The other work which I wish to notice was published posthumously in 1664. It is entitled The History of Athanasius, with the Rise, Growth and Downfall of the Arian Heresie, a subject which, in the first instance, seems to have little direct connection with his other work. However, I think it right to describe the work as Bacon’s most personal, the one in which he expresses in its full maturity his understanding of the relation between ideas and political action, and of the life of the individual whose first commitment is to the truth which his conscience confirms. It can be dated to the 1650 s by its reference to the Quakers, but it is at large an essay on the abuse of political power, the violent consequences of doctrinal disagreements within the Christian Church, and the perpetual insecurity of those who would persist in asserting the truth when the government of both church and state is corrupt.

Bacon is quite explicit in this work about the kind of reader to whom he is writing, and the principles upon which the history is composed. Firstly, chronological and geographical breadth is necessary, because ‘ Athanasius his endowments cannot well be discovered but by his actions and sufferings; nor they considered without the concurrence of like actions of his contemporaries...

which necessarily draws me many times into a by-path concerning Arianisme, to find out Athanasius , where the neglect of Writers have left him out of mind.’ Secondly, although the truth of the matters related depends upon ‘the credit of the several Authors quoted thereunto’, Bacon claims full responsibility for the ‘order’ or sequencing of those matters, since none of the original authors achieved ‘such a method as will give any satisfaction to an intelligent Reader’. 11 Throughout the work judgements are made upon the events, usually in the form of comparisons with Bacon’s own times, and these taken together not only create a fine understanding of his character but also further define what he means by an ‘intelligent Reader’. Such a person should be well educated; he particularly notes that one of the Emperor Julian’s most pernicious actions against Christians was his ‘strictly inhibiting all manner of instruction of the Children of Christians in any Humane Literature’, and he develops this observation in a revealing association of ideas: ‘lts very true that humane Learning adds no strength to the Gospel, yet as to natural men of parts it addeth light, and renders

them more capable of conviction of the weaknesse of the principles of nature, and prepares them for better grounds; which also slide more gently into their understanding, when they see the correspondency between the principles of Religion and Philosophy explained. And therefore it is a matter of wonderment to see men that would be eminent for Religion in these dayes to be enemies to a Learned Ministry.’ Such a reader is also to be distinguished from ‘the people’ who are highly susceptible to persuasion to heretical opinions because they ‘understand little beyond common sense; lesse beyond common reason; and least of all in the deep Misteries of Religion’. Such people have ‘unstable souls’ in contrast to the self-discipline, intellectual and moral, which Bacon implies is characteristic of his ‘intelligent Reader’. Ultimately of course, it is

Athanasius himself who provides the positive model and who offers, I believe, a clear reflection of Bacon’s understanding of his own behaviour and principles: ‘in a Bishop’, Bacon observes at one point in a sharp-edged comment, ‘as Athanasius was, may be an excellent temperature of a speculative tranquillity on the one part, and of practical morality in political affairs on the other’. The other explicit statement occurs in the preface and offers as well a perception of the environment in which such a man lives: ‘the Glory of Gods grace [carried] Athanasius his Faith and Spirit, and person, through a raging Sea of temptation and persecutions, to a quiet Haven, notwithstanding his enemies stormed upon him even to his grave’. 12 In these statements we have, in summary form, a clear notion of Bacon’s ideal citizen: a man utterly convinced that he bears the truth

within him, knowledgeable in the ways of the world but not corrupted by them, knowing the necessity of acting in the world according to the truth as he understands it even though such action will bring him into conflict with the powerful, whether holders of high office or controllers of public opinion. Athanasius, in other words, is a man of the kind and quality affirmed by Milton in the person of the angel Abdiel:

So spake the Seraph Abdiel faithful found, Among the faithless, faithful onely hee; Among innumerable false, unmov’d, Unshak’n, unseduc’t, unterrifi’d His Loyaltie he kept, his Love, his Zeale; Nor number, nor example with him wrought To swerve from truth, or change his constant mind Though single. From amidst them forth he passed, Long way through hostil scorn, which he susteind Superior, nor of violence feard aught. 13

Further consideration of this work is called for, because comment to which Bacon is drawn by the events he is recounting reflects directly upon both A Relation and the Ordinance. Firstly, there is one conviction which is absolutely central to his understanding of life in the world and of the way human societies work: ‘For as God hath determined that every member of the Church shall live in continual war within himself; so also shall the Church have Heresies and Schismes, that they which are approved, may be made manifest.’ For Bacon there is no middle position between truth and heresy, the single society and that society fragmented into competing sects. On the one hand there is ‘Unity and Purity of the Doctrine of Religion’; on the other, ‘Sects, Schismes, Heresies, and the Spirits of Professors never satisfied, but still lingring, as now a-dayes after new opportunities of liberty from being under Church Government, which they call, Liberty of Conscience’ . The major difference in this respect between the times of Athanasius and of Bacon is that the schismatics then gathered their adherents ‘not out of other Christian Congregations, as now-a-dayes, but out of the heathens... And yet were these not independent, as now the gathered Churches are; but in cases of difference had recourse t 0... Councils’. 14

Bacon’s explanation for the development of sects and heresies, besides the inherent disposition of fallen humanity, is ‘lack of government’, a reason which involves both civil and ecclesiastical authorities. One aspect of the great interest which Athanasius’ times clearly had for him was the bringing together of the government of Church and State under one head, the Emperor Constantine, and the way in which that power came to be used to

fragment the Church rather than to unify it. We are given a clear, succinct statement of Bacon’s constitutional thinking (and preferences) when he considers Constantine’s acceptance of a Council’s verdict that Arius was not guilty of heresy, Athanasius’ refusal to agree and Constantine’s threat to depose Athanasius. In a tone of direct engagement with the situation he writes, ‘Said like an Emperor, and not a Christian Magistrate that must govern by Law, nor like a Parliament whose Vote must make a Law... And therefore in all these there can be no president of the Christian Magistrates interest above the Ecclesiastical, nor of the Ecclesiastical interest independent upon the Christian Magistrate, in regard the general Councils were not purely Ecclesiastical, but mixt of both interests, and so continued until the Mystery of Iniquity was fully settled in the Roman Chair, and the Civil Power turned out of Doors.’ One other seat of power not mentioned here is the Court, of which Bacon is consistentlyjudgmental in tone. He explains much of the Arians’ success as deriving from their being the dominant party at court, and he shows both why they should be

powerful and what consequences follow. Although the Arians had little popular support, he argues, they ‘bear it out as the Faith Imperial, and as the Faith of Great Men... and to be observed of all that expect preferment’. In another place he speaks harshly of churchmen who become involved in the life of the Court: ‘These Church-men whose conscience will allow them to forsake their pastoral charge, to live at the Court, that conscience will also allow them to turn Apostates to any errour that shall come into fashion there.’ Fie does not say that Constantine was simply the creature of the Arian party but he does show how his actions towards Athanasius and, in the end, towards orthodox Christianity, were powerfully influenced by those close to him who were of the Arian persuasion. His assessment of Constantine’s character and achievement shows both a strong prejudice and an attempt to strike a balance: ‘in the general stream of his government he shewed himself wise, couragious, and after his manner zealous in advancement of Gods Worship, though in his later times more for the Ceremony, and scarce short of Superstition, the ordinary fault of Christian Princes.’ 15

There are two aspects of the distortions in Church and State brought about by Arians at court which are particularly pertinent to our understanding of Bacon’s interest in Spira, and his attitude to religious controversy. In general terms the significance of Athanasius’ story for Bacon lies in his defence of orthodox Christianity against heresy on the one hand and state power on the other. Constantine comes to power at a time in the history of the Church when ‘professors affecting the repute of extraordinary insight in

misteries of Divinity, begin to fancy sublime doctrines, and to be telers of news, and New Lights’. The Church’s method of discipline, excommunication, is ineffective, leading to ‘a tide of Schisme’, and it is against this fragmentation of the Church that Constantine initially applies the power of the State. However, the increasing dominance of the Arian party leads to the official toleration of their churches (as Bacon describes it, ‘a schism licensed and tolerated by the authority of the Christian Magistrate’) and, in consequence, ‘a usurpation of the Christian Magistrate over the Churches, in determining matters ecclesiastical, contrary to the determination of a general Council... these are two sores to the Church unto this day’. Toleration leads inexorably to civil disorder, subsequent events showing that ‘it is never conducing to the peace of any Nation to grant tolleration of contrary Principles in Religion, more than it is for the peace of any single persons conscience to be of a doubtful mind’. All that is left in this situation is for the Arians, after securing their position at court, to begin active persecution of the orthodox: ‘their displeasure is become perfect hatred, nothing will satisfie but destruction of the Orthodox, and their not being’. 16

It is in this time of persecution, involving Athanasius’ exile from Alexandria into the desert and the loss of life and property by many others, that the issue of apostasy comes clearly into focus. Bacon regards apostasy as the result of weakness, an inability to stand up for the truth in the face of social pressures backed up by force either implicit, in the case of those who adapt themselves to the values of the current holders of power, or explicit, in the case of civil or military harassment. He notes how the persecution, ‘instead of driving the Orthodox together, drove them asunder... [those] stoutly withstanding the Arians, too severely... censured... [those] who through weaknesse had obscured their Profession’, and shows that the submission of those in positions of eminence ‘made many to stagger... and may serve to mind, especially old Professors... often to use that prayer of the Psalmist, And now when I am old and gray headed, O Lord forsake me not : more especially in this instant of apostacy wherein we now live.’ In a time of apostasy, of‘revolting and lapsing from the truth’, an experience worse than exile or death in his estimation, Bacon sees only one appropriate course of action open to one who would still affirm the truth, that is, ‘under an outward oppression, yet hold life and soul together, with a free Conscience, until better times come... No form of profession, no separation from Christian Congregations and Assemblies, no nor from society in worldly affairs with mankind, will be a remedy against schism and errours.’ 17 The cause lies deep in human nature, and can only be confronted directly in political and social terms; the

means of sustenance, a ‘free Conscience’ derived from the assurance that one possesses the truth, equally lies deep in every individual; and the most destructive action which can be undertaken is to corrupt that conscience, to become an apostate from the truth.

As Bacon tells it, Athanasius’ story does not have a happy ending. In terms full of resonance for the 1640 s and 1650 s he shows first how, in Alexandria after Athanasius’ death, ‘persecution breaks in like a torrent, no man can stand before it’, and then how, as a direct result of schism arose ‘two grand sects, devouring all the rest... the Papal power’ and Islam. His concluding sentences are in the tragic mood, and full of foreboding: ‘And thus the once famous Eastern Churches have made a sad and lamentable account of their progress from Unity to Separation, from thence to Schisme, so to Enmity, thence to Persecution, and lastly to Heathenisme. And the Christian Magistrate in a restlesse Tolleration, from an Imperial Power to a miserable servitude.’ 18

In The History of Athanasius, unlike the other published work which he either authored or with which he is evidently associated, Nathaniel Bacon brought together the individual and his society and attempted to offer an account of their interaction through time in order to reveal certain fundamental principles concerning the nature of government and of political power. In particular, he is concerned to reveal what it means to live according to conscience in a fallen world and so, in Athanasius, provides us with the positive model to counter the negative given in Spira. In each case the world beyond the individual is the same, a place of danger and uncertainty; the difference lies in the inner strength or weakness of particular men which is revealed in extreme situations.

I have no evidence, as mentioned earlier, to suggest that Bacon himself ever faced personal threats of the kind experienced by Spira or Athanasius, but the works taken together reveal clearly the imaginable possibilities for such a man as Bacon, the choices which could be thrust upon him and the extreme alternatives attendant upon his response, that is, vindication of the truth in which he believed, or ultimate rejection as an apostate. In his understanding there was no third position, no plurality of forms in which truth could be manifested; plurality was, by definition, evidence of the presence of error and, ultimately, the product of the devil’s involvement in human affairs. Apostasy, then, describes a highly specific and terrible experience. On the one hand there is the recognition (which also informs Books XI and XII of Paradise Lost) of implacable conflict between opposing world powers, the Divine and the Demonic, manifested through the whole history of attempts to suppress or destroy the truth. In Bacon’s awareness not only the Papacy and Islam, but latterly radical Protestants as well,

were instruments of demonic power, acting aggressively to subvert the nation’s political and religious institutions. On the other there is the individual conscience, under threat not only by obvious antagonists in the community but by inward subversion from the devil and from one’s own weaknesses. The more socially and intellectually prominent is the individual, the more likely it is that that individual will become a focus of attention. Apostasy occurs whenever such an individual acts against conscience to satisfy worldly interests of whatever kind, 19 but the torment of horror and despair at the spectacle of one’s own damnation occurs only when one is consciously aware both of the truth as previously affirmed and the denial of that truth to which one’s present circumstances testify. What we are then offered, in the association between Bacon and Spira, is an insight into some private and personal dimensions of experience of the puritan leadership in the period leading up to the civil war, an insight into the anxieties and fears about personal inadequacy which complemented such vigorous possession and assertion of the truth about society and human nature, an indication of the psychic cost of such a complete reliance on individual conscience as the ultimate source of integrity and vindication of action.

I have two reflections on my interpretation of Bacon’s work which I would like to add, both related to my view that A Relation was intended by Bacon for an elite audience. Firstly, by the time of its publication in 1638 people like Bacon were aware that pressure was being applied against ‘the truth’ not only from the Papacy and its local analogues but from radical Protestantism as well. It becomes one of the ironies of history, if I can correctly generalise from the reading I have done so far, that although the later editions of Bacon’s A Relation always underlined the Catholic threat, and referred generally to the ‘apostatizing spirit spread far and wide’, direct personal responses to Spira’s story begin in the 1650 s to show up particularly amongst those labelled as sectaries by Bacon. One aspect of the work’s value seems certainly to lie in its warning of the dangers of apostasy, in this case from one sect to another or back to the established Church; but the other major interest, the experience of total loss of faith and conviction in one’s salvation, seems to assume heightened significance for those who have experienced a conversion or partial conversion and then suffer that loss of conviction and diminished sense of personal worth which is called a ‘spiritual desertion’. Bunyan’s reading of Bacon’s life of Spira in these terms is only the most well-known instance of what I believe to be a widespread phenomenon. 20

The other reflection relates to Milton. Although I have not found a direct reference to Spira in Milton’s writing, there is an inescapable parallel between the experience of apostasy as it is

exemplified in Spira’s story and evoked by Bolton, and Satan’s experience as this is powerfully presented by Milton in Paradise Lost, particularly in the soliloquies in which Satan reveals the personal, subjective dimension of his existence. I shall quote briefly from these very well known speeches, just to identify key points:

... horror and doubt distract His troubl’d thoughts, and from the bottom stirr The Hell within him, for within him Hell He brings, and round about him, nor from Hell One step no more then from himself can fly By change of place: Now conscience wakes despair That slumberd, wakes the bitter memorie Of what he was, what is, and what must be Worse;...

Ay me, they little know How dearly I abide that boast so vaine, Under what torments inwardly I groane:

I in none of these Find place or refuge; and the more I see Pleasures about me, so much more I feel Torment within me, as from the hateful siege Of contraries; all good to mee becomes Bane, and in Heav’n much worse would be my state. 21

In Christian Doctrine Milton treated apostasy almost in passing, in Book 11, Chapter 6, which is headed ‘On Zeal’, although he gave very detailed treatment earlier in the work to two central aspects of apostasy, that of reprobation and the experience or condition of ‘hardening of heart’. The importance of his specific inclusion of the topic at this point in the work lies in how he defines it; apostasy is, together with ‘Concealment of religion’ (as exemplified by Nicodemus) and the ‘Profession of one’s faith at the wrong time’, classified as the opposite to a ‘firm and, when necessary, open profession of the true religion’, which he understands to include a willingness to accept martyrdom. 22 Milton is, in other words, emphasising the social and political dimensions of religious experience and the potential for conflict between the individual and state power over matters of belief. He is, furthermore, indicating that in such a conflict one’s conviction of the truth must take precedence over all other considerations. In doing this Milton is undoubtedly, as I think it proper to claim for Bacon, assuming a certain quality of character, what Christopher Hill has described as ‘an arrogant individualism, a self-confidence tempered by a strong internalized moral sense, the product almost certainly of his Puritan

upbringing’. 23 This description occurs in a chapter of Milton and the English Revolution entitled ‘The Dialectic of Discipline and Liberty’, a chapter which bears very closely in its conclusions on Bacon as well. What I should like to suggest, in the light of a similarity of concern between the two men across a wide range of issues, is that my conclusion that Spira defines for Bacon a real potential of experience for him is true for Milton as well in relation to Satan. The dialectical play between conceptual opposites such as discipline and liberty, or God and Satan, becomes fully actual for an individual when a choice with actual and immediate consequences presents itself, when thought and history intersect in the life of an individual. By showing Satan as the Apostate, not only from ‘outside’, in his just rejection from the community of the saved, but in terms of the horror and torment of his subjective experience, Milton identifies with precision the worst, the most intolerable and yet possible dimension of experience for a man in his situation should he violate the truth and act against the dictates of conscience. As it is said in the epistle to the Hebrews x. 29-31, one of the texts which he quoted in Christian Doctrine in the section on zeal:

How much worse punishment do you think will be deserved by the man who has spurned the Son of God, and profaned the blood of the Covenant by which he was sanctified and outraged the Spirit of Grace? For we know him who said, ‘Vengeance is mine, I will repay.’ And again, ‘The Lord will judge his people.’ It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.

A revised version of a paper presented at the second national early modern studies conference held in the Alexander Turnbull Library, 7-8 February 1980.

REFERENCES 1 Nathaniel Bacon, A Relation of the Fearfull Estate of Francis Spira, in the Year 1548 (London, 1638). 2 Ibid., pp. 15-17, 20-21. 3 Ibid., sigs. A3v-Asr. 4 Ibid., pp. 48-51. 5 pp. 80-84. 6 A Relation, sigs. 7r-Bv. 7 Ibid., p. 6. 8 sig. A4r-v. The historical and intellectual context for this work is discussed by Christopher Hill, Puritanism and Revolution: Studies in Interpretation of the English Revolution of the Seventeenth Century (London, 1962), ch. 3, ‘The Norman Yoke’.

9 An Arrow Against all Tyrants and Tyrany, Shot from the Prisoti ofNew-gate unto the Prerogative Bowels of the Arbitrary House of Lords and all Other Usurpers and Tyrants Whatsoever (London, 1646), p. 12. 10 pp. 12, 14. 11 sigs. A2r-v. 12 pp. 182, 11, 131-132, sig. 2v. 13 Paradise Lost, V. 896-905. 14 The History of Athanasius, pp. 6,5, 27, 4. 15 Ibid., pp. 27,'57, 167, 73, 69. 16 Ibid., pp. 3, 38, 102, 118. 17 Ibid., pp. 175, 148, 122, 131. 18 Ibid., pp. 221-227.

19 Thomas Case, in The Root of Apostasy, and Fountain of Fortitude (London, 1644), writes: ‘Fear and Tremble, I will not limit God, but this I dare say, it is a thousand to one, but when God and the Kingdom should have most need of thee, thou wilt then turn Apostate. My reason is, because, If Religion and a Covenant upon it, cannot prevail with thee, to forsake thy lust; It is a mighty odds, if thy lust do not prevail with thee, to forsake thy Religion, and the Covenant ’ (p. 10). 20 John Bunyan, Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners, ed. Roger Sharrock (London, 1966), pp. 51-52. 21 Paradise Lost, IV. 18-26; IV. 86-88; IX. 118-123. 22 Complete Prose Works of John Milton (New Haven and London, 1973), vol. 6, p. 701. 23 Christopher Hill, Milton and the English Revolution (London, 1977), ch. 20.