Reviews of the Week
“Enthusiasm": A Phenomenon
Enthusiasm. A Chapter in the History of Religion, with Special Refer-
ence to the Seventeenth and Elrhteenth Centuries. By R. A. Knox. (Oxford University Pr 305.)
IT is true—indeed it is largely thehesis of the present work—that the enthusiastic tendency is one which recurs, as it were by spon- taneous generation, throughout the history of the Church." Accordingly the purpose of Mgr. Knox's massive study of nearly six hundred pages is to essay an interpretation of the ubiquitous yet elusive phenomenon of " enthusiasm "—by concentrating detailed attention on its particular manifestations in the epoch of its most remarkable, vogue during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and also by setting them against the wider background of Church history, beginning with St. Paul's First Epistle to the Corinthians and concluding with almost contemporary revivalism in the United States. The resulting book represents, as the author confesses, " the whole of a man's literary life, the unique child of his thought," to the making of which thirty years of reading and reflection have gone ; and it may be said at once that patience has had its perfect work in the production of a volume which, alike for indefatigable industry, omnivorous reading and individual interpretation, will surely rank for at least a generation as a definitive study of its subject.
But what is the phenomenon of " enthusiasm " which compre- hends under one genus so many and varied species as Quakerism, Jansenism, Quietism, Moravianism and Methodism (to mention only the chief of Mgr. Knox's specimens) ? Can any definition be constructed which will bring unity to this apparent chaos and yet allow for the individual vagaries which are of the essence of its history ? The author himself is acutely aware of the difficulty, and offers a sub-division of his subject into "two types of enthusiasm, which baffle us by occasional similarities, but are . . . curiously different in their inspiration . . . 'mystical' and ' evangelical ' enthusiasm." The former concentrates on the cultivation of an interior spiritual union with, and possession by, God, and is indifferent to the outward creeds and ordinances of the visible Church. The second represents the demand of the individual soul for sensible assurances of salvation, and tends to rest everything upon visible evidences of this experience.
But it may be suggested that the fundamental line of demarcation lies in the recurrent claim of some of these movements to cut adrift altogether from historic Christianity by relaxing hold on the events of the life of its historical Founder. Mgr. Knox discovers in Montanists of the early centuries, in the followers of Joachim in the Middle Ages, and in Quakers and Quietists of later post- Reformation centuries a common *lief in their inauguration of a new era or dispensation of the Hply Spirit. This conviction led to dangerous depreciation of the &Se of Christianity, as a religion roOted and grounded in history, which was represented by such statements as that of James Nayler : "He that expecteth to be saved by Jesus Christ that died at Jerusalem shall be deceived." It was a distinguishing merit of Dr. G. P. Nuttall's The Holy Spirit in Puritan Faith and Experience (the absence of which from Mgr. KROX'S bibliography may be noted) that he emphasised that the "sense of a Christian watershed in history was lacking in Quaker conviction "—and Mgr. Knox shows the same defect in others of his "enthusiasts." It is most probably at this point, therefore, that the Church must draw its ne plus ultra line of defence.
It is the particular virtue of this book that the author has casi his net so widely, and has laid so many movements and centuries under toll for the illustration of his major theme. Inevitably the reader is tempted to be drawn away into side-paths, as Mgr. Knox delineates with very considerable detail the personal fortunes and corporate histories of some of his varied examples. The temptation must be severely resisted by the, 'Viewer. But some points of detail may be remarked. It is evident that Mgr. Knox has a deep admiration for George Fox and John Wesley ; that he has a pro- found knowledge of the several degrees and schools of mystical writings, as is abundantly clear in his dissection of' the extreme positions of the Quietists.; and that he has a marked dislike for the Jansenists (and here again it may be observed in passing that his narrative and bibliography take no account of Dr. Jean Orcibal's biography of the Abbe de Saint-Cyran, though perhaps its publica- tion in 1947 came after the writing of his chapters on this subject). In the midst of so much detail it is surprising to find some major gaps, such as thE concentration of attention on Luther as " un. doubtedly author of the Reformation" to the virtual exclusion of John Calvin, his writings and work, or the passing over in silence of the fierce governmental persecution which lay behind the episode, mentioned in an aside, whereby Huguenots "had been reconciled in great numbers to the Church." Against this must be offset, however, the repudiation of the human agents employed by Bossuet for the downfall of Fenelon, singularly reminiscent of the cor- respondence between Manning and Mgr. Talbot in the last century ; and it may be that there is more than meets the eye in such observations concerning the seventeenth-century Jesuits as that they "would approach, with all too open a mind, the ethics oeassassina- tion, or the culpability of breaking God's law, -when you do no believe in God " ; or that "they do not always show up well; it takes all sorts to make a Society ", But these, it must be iterated, are points of detail. .Perhaps the most impressive single characteristic of Mgr. Knox's book is its wealth of recondite illustration and of various investigation. Few readers could hope to equal his range of knowledge. • But nowhere in nearly six hundred pages is he dull or uninteresting. Indeed, even in his maximum opus, he has not shed altogether that super- fluity of naughtiness which poked fund at his contemporaries in his earlier Essays in Satire. Thus a lambent anti-feminism peeps Out in such obiter dicta as: "From Montanism onwards, the history Of enthusiasm is largely a history of female emancipation, and it is not a reassuring one " ; or "If Maximilla was the Madame Guyon of Montanism, Lucille no less surely played Countess of Huntingdon to the Donatists. Lucille's Connexioti so it must have seemed at first." Nor is the volume lacking in a plentiful sprinkling of wise saws and modern instances, as when he observes of Tertullian's conversion to Montanism, "It' was a:s if Newman had joined the Salvation Army."
This book is ample assurance that its author's gelling for the bon mot has not been quenched by the spirit of "enthusiasm." The conclusion of the matter may be stated in his own words: "In itself enthusiasm is not a wrong tendency, but a false emphasis." In any community which sets itself to realise Moses' aspiration, "Would that all the Lord's people were prophets," there must be tireless vigilance to fulfil the admonition of St. Paul, "Let us prophesy according to the proportion of faith " ; sive prophetiam,
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