God's Fury, England's Fire_ A New History of the English Civil Wars - Michael J. Braddick [266]
Edwards’s own contribution to the ensuing exchanges did not at the time elicit much by way of direct response. Antapologia, however, did wonders for his career as a hammer of the sectaries, for that is what this campaign meant to Edwards: his critique of Independency concentrated almost exclusively on the sectarian consequences of the dissolution of a national church. Antapologia probably helped to secure him a lectureship at Christ Church, in the heart of the City, where his lectures became major public events (at least, if he is to be believed). People flocked to hear him speak about the dangers of the sects, among them his opponents, who heckled and scuffled as he spoke. This notoriety seems also to have put him at the centre of a network of correspondents shocked by the proliferating problems of maintaining religious order and decency and anxious to give publicity to the excesses of the sects.17
During 1646, exploiting this position, Edwards launched a massive publishing venture – Gangraena. Three parts were eventually produced, totalling over 800 pages, forming an ill-disciplined catalogue of errors, schism and heresy, lavishly and sensationally illustrated with reports of religious excess from around the country. The first instalment, produced in January and February, invited readers to write in with more material, and that helped to stuff the further instalments in May and December with more lurid stories. The timings were significant and each edition was apparently being added to up to the point of publication. This was a calculated appeal for public support for the Presbyterian cause: the first at a moment when renewal of the Solemn League and Covenant was being sought; the second coincided with the promotion of a remonstrance in London, very hostile to the sects, and in favour of the Solemn League and Covenant and a rapid peace settlement on Presbyterian terms; the third when hostility to the army was renewed. This mode of operation, Edwards’s own intemperance and the need to get the books out quickly contributed to their sprawling character. But that also helped to make their point – their very form communicated the sprawling, spiralling danger of the sects.18
Thomas Edwards’s Gangraena
This campaign was more or less purely negative. Edwards nowhere defended or described the correct form of Presbyterian discipline as he saw it. His only concern was with the monstrous profusion of sects, the deadly disease of the Christian body. In this he has been fabulously successful, mined for examples and evidence by his contemporary fellow travellers and by historians seeking to understand and evoke the chaotic profusion of religious experiments in this period. By the same token, however, the question of whether to believe Edwards has been equally persistent. He was immediately labelled as a liar, and his reputation has declined among historians in recent years, suspicious of his purposes and unable to verify his sources.
Edwards probably did not make things up,19 but in any case counting sectaries does not really get at the heart of the problem of order – the issue was not a quantitative one. What was really new and radical about this was that fundamental questions were being debated before a public audience. It had become necessary to argue for, and defend, institutions which had previously been thought to be fundamental to spiritual and social order – learned ministry, a national church. In effect, public approval was being garnered for their place in a settlement even by those who, as a matter of principle, believed that their authority (and political settlement) did not depend on consent. Moreover, this was an escalating difficulty – those who sought to intervene were bound to try to establish the legitimacy of their intervention before a large public.