First published in 1992, this book examines the intellectual confrontation between priest and Freethinker from 1660 to 1730, and the origins of the early phase of the Enlightenment in England. Through an analysis of the practice of historical writing in the period, Champion maintains that historical argument was a central component for displaying defences of true religion. Taking religion, and specifically defences of the Church of England after 1660, as central to the politics of the period, the first two chapters of the book explore the varieties of clericalist histories, arguing that there were rival emphases upon regnum or sacerdos as the font of true religion. The remainder of the book examines how radical Freethinkers like John Toland or the third Earl of Shaftesbury set about attacking the corrupt priestcraft of established religion, but also importantly promoted a reforming civil theology.

In the preface to his edition of Shakespeare, Alexander Pope noted that his age was one of Parties, both in Wit and State. Much scholarship has been devoted to the complexities of the political parties of the eighteenth century, but there has been a surprising reluctance to explore what Pope implied were the corollaries of those parties, namely, parties in literature. The essays collected here explore the literary culture that arose from and supported what Pitt the Elder referred to as the great spirit of Whiggism that animated English politics during the eighteenth century. From the prehistory of Whiggism in the court of Charles II to the fractures opened up within it by the French Revolution in the 1790s, the interactions between Whiggish politics and literature are sampled and described in groundbreaking essays that range widely across the fields of eighteenth-century political prose, poetry, and the novel.

The Devil's Tabernacle is the first book to examine in depth the intellectual and cultural impact of the oracles of pagan antiquity on modern European thought. Anthony Ossa-Richardson shows how the study of the oracles influenced, and was influenced by, some of the most significant developments in early modernity, such as the Christian humanist recovery of ancient religion, confessional polemics, Deist and libertine challenges to religion, antiquarianism and early archaeology, Romantic historiography, and spiritualism. Ossa-Richardson examines the different views of the oracles since the Renaissance--that they were the work of the devil, or natural causes, or the fraud of priests, or finally an organic element of ancient Greek society. The range of discussion on the subject, as he demonstrates, is considerably more complex than has been realized before: hundreds of scholars, theologians, and critics commented on the oracles, drawing on a huge variety of intellectual contexts to frame their beliefs. In a central chapter, Ossa-Richardson interrogates the landmark dispute on the oracles between Bernard de Fontenelle and Jean-François Baltus, challenging Whiggish assumptions about the mechanics of debate on the cusp of the Enlightenment. With erudition and an eye for detail, he argues that, on both sides of the controversy, to speak of the ancient oracles in early modernity was to speak of one's own historical identity as a Christian.

Examines the evolving relationship between Church and State, the character of radical thought in Enlightenment England, and the nature of that Enlightenment itself. A tribute to the work of the late Justin Champion, this volume explores the radical religious and political ideas of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century England which were at the heart of Champion's intellectual contributions. Drawing on the debates and upheavals that dominated the period from the British Civil Wars to the mid-eighteenth century, the essays in this collection interrogate the challenging relationship between politics and religion which prompted what Champion called a 'Crisis of Christianity'. Diverse perspectives on that crisis are reconstructed, encompassing the experiences of republicans and radicals, philosophers and historians, atheists and clergymen. Through these individuals, a complex discourse which defies easy categorisation is recovered, but which speaks to central discussions concerning the evolving relationship between Church and State, the character of radical thought in Enlightenment England, and indeed the nature of that Enlightenment itself.