William Erbery

William Erbery or Erbury [Also Earbury.] (Glamorganshire, 1604-1654) was a Welsh clergyman and radical Independent theologian.

Life

He graduated from Brasenose College, Oxford, England in 1623. ["Concise Dictionary of National Biography"] .

He was ejected in 1638 from his Cardiff parish of St. Mary’s, under the bishop of Landaff who had branded him a schismatic [CNDB] , after several citations before the Court of High Commission. His offence had been to refuse to read the "Book of Sports" [Hill, "Change and Continuity in 17th-Century England", p. 21.] . He became chaplain when war broke out in 1640 to the regiment of Philip Skippon in the Parliamentary Army. According to Christopher Hill ["The English Bible and the Seventeenth-Century Revolution" (1993), p. 217.]

From there he retired to the Isle of Ely [Hill, English Bible, p. 146.] . He was a Seeker [ [http://www.exlibris.org/nonconform/engdis/seekers.html] ; Hill, Change and Continuity p. 229.] ; in Ely he expanded the Seekers in the 1640s [Hill, The World Turned Upside Down (Penguin edition) p. 47.] .

He expected for a regime of ‘saints’ who (in the later 1640s) would carry out God’s will in England. [Hill, Experience of Defeat, p. 82 names William Sedgwick, Peter Sterry and Joshua Sprigge as highest in Erbery’s estimation.] . He looked to the Army and Cromwell for reform: abolition of tithes and the state church. In 1646 he took part in a high-profile disputation with the orthodox Presbyterian and heresy watchdog Francis Cheynell.

Views

With a disillusioned attitude to the movement of the times, though accepting Cromwell's Protectorate, he was a suspected Ranter [Hill, "A Nation of Change and Novelty", pp. 188-9: "William Erbery, for example, had many Ranterish views, and came to visit Clarkson in jail. He was examined by Parliament as a suspect Ranter in 1652."] .

He favoured broad religious tolerance, and was dismissive of churches, believing that ‘apostasy’ had set in early in Christian times [Hill, World Upside Down, p. 194; Hill, "Milton and the English Revolution" (1977), p. 84.] ; and criticized much even in the Independent churches of his time [Hill, "Liberty Against the Law" (1996), p. 185.] . He attacked the assumption of the sufficiency of scripture, but doubted the Trinity had Biblical support. He believed free grace had been brought forth by John Preston and Richard Sibbes [Hill, World Upside Down, p. 186.] , preached universal redemption [Hill, Milton, p. 272-3: "Winstanley, Walwyn, Coppin, John Robins, Erbery and the author of Tyranipocrit Discovered thought that all men shall be saved."] , and denied the divinity of Christ [ Hill, World Upside Down, p. 192.] . His millennarian views included a Second Coming, but realised by and within 'saints' [Hill, Milton, p. 309: "William Erbery, Gerrard Winstanley, Joseph Salmon, Jacob Bathumley, Richard Coppin, Laurence Clarkson and other Ranters held the Familist view that the Fall, the Second Coming, the Lat Judgement and the end of the world were all events which take place on earth within the individual conscience." Also p. 304.] .

He opposed the Baptists, for example in his 1653 pamphlet "A Mad Mans Plea" [Hill, World Upside Down, p. 281; Alfred Cohen, "Two Roads to the Puritan Millennium: William Erbury and Vavasor Powell", Church History, Vol. 32, No. 3 (Sep., 1963), pp. 322-338.] .

References

* Christopher Hill, The Experience of Defeat: Milton and Some Contemporaries, Ch. 4 I
* Hill, The World Turned Upside Down, Ch. 9 II

Notes

External links

* [http://ia301119.us.archive.org/3/items/thetestimonyofwi00erbeuoft/thetestimonyofwi00erbeuoft_djvu.txt "The Testimony of William Erbery", online text]