A Satyr Against Hypocrites

A Satyr Against Hypocrites

John Phillips anonymous poem, A Satyr Against Hypocrites, was entered in the Stationers Register on March 14, 1654-55 as the work of his brother Edward and the property of his publisher Nathaniel Brook, and it was probably published on August 17 (David Masson, The Life of John Milton [London, 1877], V, 228n., cites the Thomason copy as indicating the date of publication). Actually, two issues appeared in 1655. One gave no indication of the publisher and is reproduced here, as perhaps the rarest, from the copy in the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library. The other was Printed for N.B. at the Angel in Corn-hill. The 1655 text was reprinted in 1661 as The Religion of the Hypocritical Presbyterians in Meeter, and a revised and enlarged edition appeared in 1671 under the original title. It was this rather than the original version which is known through the summary given by William Godwin (Lives of Edward and John Phillips [London, 1815], pp. 49-51) and quoted by Masson as the most exact description possible of the 1655 performance (ibid., V, 228). Other editions have been recorded for 1674, 1677, 1680, 1689, and 1710, the last being attributed to the authors uncle, John Milton. Of these, the editions which I have seen show only minor revisions of the 1671 text. A holograph manuscript, preserved in the Bodleian Library, includes a two-page dedication to the successful barrister John Churchill, but the dedication was apparently never printed. Neither the unpublished dedication nor the poem itself contains a clear indication of the purpose or the direction of the satire. In pleading her case for John Phillips authorship of the anonymous life of Milton, Miss Helen Derbyshire (The Early Lives of Milton [London, 1932], pp. xxii-xxv) has taken issue with the common statement that it marked Phillips departure from his uncles teachings and has described it as a satire against the Presbyterians from an Independent position with which Milton might well have sympathized. Yet the text hardly supports these contentions. The Sunday service which Phillips burlesques shows no signs of Presbyterian discipline. In fact, sectarianism is almost at its worst in his picture of a congregation crying destruction against Covenant-breakers, making grinning appeals for free grace, and screaming for the Fifth Monarchy in a state of revelation-madness. Furthermore, the Brother Elnathan who makes his appearance at the dinner following the Wednesday service received his name in a Baptist Ducking-pond rather than from the customary Presbyterian sprinkling. There may be some significance, too, in the fact that the particularly satiric reference to the man midwife, Dr. Peter Chamberlain, was to a noted Independent. On the other hand, the church specifically identified as the scene of the weekday service was St. Marys Aldermanbury, and its minister was the Reverend Edmund Calamy, whose inclinations were Presbyterian and whose personally conducted fastday services were notoriously popular. Although Calamys custom of preaching from the desk rather than from the pulpit makes it unlikely that he was the minister satirized in the early part of the poem, he would normally have been identified as the object of Phillips most severe and scandalous attack; and the device of having him refer to the Laud instead of the Lord may have had reference to the rumors of early conformity which still haunted Calamy despite his service to the Puritan cause as one of the Smectymnuans and a member of the Westminster Assembly of Divines. There is no evidence, however, that Presbyterianism as a particular nonconformist sect stirred Phillips to any special antagonism. ......Buy Now (To Read More)

Product details

Ebook Number: 49323
Author: Phillips, John
Release Date: Jun 29, 2015
Format: eBook
Language: English