(January 15, 2022 at 2:24 pm)Rahn127 Wrote: And even if that ruler wasn't a priest, he most definitely wasn't an atheist. The head of the church would also often remind that particular ruler when laws didn't align with holy scripture or the priests interpretation of it.
There is a fine line that both of them walked. They needed each to comply with their own plans for power. The priests had the people and the ruler had an army.
I guess things changed over time in England. Henry VIII obviously changed things.
In the late 1700s there was a lot of diversity of thought in England. Certain social classes had a lot of sympathy for the American Revolution and later the French Revolution. Skilled tradesmen, who were often intelligent and educated but lacked political power, paid close attention to how other people got rid of their kings. George III cracked down hard with censorship laws, etc.
This was all political, as religious expression was quite free. For example, Jacob Boehme's works were all translated into English and were widely and freely available even when they were still banned in German-speaking countries. Boehme is certainly not someone with the C of E's stamp of approval.
Thomas Paine (an atheist) and William Blake (an extreme antinomian Christian) were friends in the circle around Joseph Johnson's progressive bookstore. Paine had to flee for his political writings, and Blake was briefly tried for allegedly saying "Damn the king" while kicking a drunken soldier out of his garden. Johnson, who seems not to have been religious, was jailed for publishing politically subversive material. But none of them was ever in trouble for his religious beliefs, or lack thereof.
