“Sinne Unfoulded”: Time, Election, and Disbelief among the Godly in Late Sixteenth- and Early Seventeenth-Century England

Abstract

Richard Greenham, rector from 1570 to 1591 at Dry Dayton Church outside of Cambridge, England, once preached a sermon based on I Thessalonians 5:19 (“Quench not the spirit”). Not one to let the brevity of a biblical text limit his own exegesis, Greenham offered up a sermon of nearly seven thousand words that likely took the better part of an hour to deliver. At the heart of Greenham's message was the proposition, “Whether that man which hath once tasted of the spirite may loose it, and have it quenched in him.” Greenham was a leading light among “the godly,” a group of mostly Cambridge- and Oxford-educated Protestant clergy who, working within the boundaries of the institutional Church, sustained a significant evangelical effort in England during the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. These reformers embraced with some fervor a theology grounded in the veracity of election and reprobation, and worked to instill a like enthusiasm in the general population. In particular, the godly's message focused on how an individual might identify the marks of divine election and gain assurance of salvation.