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Pietro Giannone and the Nonjuring Contribution to the Separation of Church and State

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 October 2020

Abstract

Why did the English Nonjuror Richard Rawlinson promote the 1729–30 English translation of Pietro Giannone's Civil History of Naples? The Nonjurors in England espoused ecclesiastical independency from the state, which they derived from the thought of Restoration High Churchmen and from the French Gallican Louis Ellies Du Pin. Giannone, a Neapolitan lawyer, proposed a similar “two powers” model of strict autonomy for both church and state. Giannone's concept was later rejected by enlightened writers like Viscount Bolingbroke and Edward Gibbon, who associated it with high church prejudices. It was defended by the Dissenter Joseph Priestley, who combined it with his own theory of religious sociability. The impact of Giannone on the Nonjurors and on Priestley illuminates the complex religious background to what is often seen as a fundamentally secular doctrine: the separation of church and state.

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Copyright
Copyright © The North American Conference on British Studies, 2020

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References

1 Giannone, Pietro, Dell'Istoria Civile del Regno di Napoli, 4 vols. (Naples, 1723)Google Scholar; Giannone, Pietro, The Civil History of the Kingdom of Naples, trans. Ogilvie, James, 2 vols. (London, 1729, 1731)Google Scholar. Unless otherwise noted, all translations from the Italian- and French-language sources are my own.

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3 Hugh Trevor-Roper, “Scotland and the Enlightenment,” in Robertson, History and the Enlightenment, 17–33; Hook, Andrew, “La Storia Civile del Regno di Napoli di Pietro Giannone, il Giacobitismo e l'Illuminismo Scozzeze,” Ricerche Storiche 28, no. 2 (1998): 391–402Google Scholar.

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8 MS Vet[era] A4 e. 79, fols. 3v–4, Bodleian Libary.

9 Lionardo Panzini, “Vita di Pietro Giannone,” in Opere Postume di Pietro Giannone, ed. Lionardo Panzini, 3 vols. (“Italia,” 1821), 3:45–46; Sergio Bertelli, Giannoniana: Autografi, Manoscritti e Documenti della Fortuna di Pietro Giannone (Milan, 1968), 149–56.

10 Bod. Vet. A4 e. 79; Vet. F4 d. 7 (t. 1).

11 Nichols, Literary Anecdotes, 5:372–73; Patricia Brewerton, “Locker, John (1693–1760),” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/16894; John Westby-Gibson and J. A. Marchant, “Drake, Samuel (1687/8–1753),” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/8031.

12 Daily Courant (London), 21 March 1730. The same paper ran a story on the condemnation of Giannone's work by the Inquisition: Daily Courant, 1 August 1723. For the Daily Courant, see Harris, Michael, London Newspapers in the Age of Walpole: A Study of the Origins of the Modern English Press (Cranbury, 1987), 66Google Scholar.

13 Nicolas Lenglet du Fresnoy, Méthode pour étudier l'Histoire, 2 vols. (Paris, 1713).

14 Nicolas Lenglet du Fresnoy, Méthode pour étudier l'Histoire, 2nd ed., 4 vols. (Paris, 1729), 3:361; Nicolas Lenglet du Fresnoy, Metodo per Istudiare la Storia, trans. Sebastiano Coleti, 2 vols. (Venice, 1726), 2:273.

15 Nicolas Lenglet du Fresnoy, A New Method of Studying History, trans. Richard Rawlinson, 2 vols. (London, 1728), 2:407.

16 Lenglet du Fresnoy, A New Method of Studying History, 2:407.

17 Daily Journal (London), 30 October 1727.

18 Daily Journal, 20 January 1729, 22 January 1729, 24 January 1729, 18 March 1729, 19 March 1729.

19 Country Journal, or, The Craftsman (London), 15 April 1729, 26 April 1729, 17 January 1730, 24 January 1730; Fog's Weekly Journal (London), 29 January 1732; Caledonian Mercury (Edinburgh), 15 April 1729; William Merritt Sale Jr., Samuel Richardson, Master Printer (Ithaca, 1950), 109; Simon Varey, “The Craftsman,” in Telling People What to Think: Early Eighteenth-Century Periodicals from “The Review” to “The Rambler, ed. J. A. Downie and Thomas N. Corns (Abingdon, 1993, 2011), 63–77.

20 [Archibald Bower], Historia Litteraria, 4 vols. (1731–1734), 1:1–16, 81–98, 167–87, 253–72.

21 [Bower], Historia Litteraria, 1:3, 15.

22 [Bower], 1:347–60. Bower noted Giannone's answer to Giuseppe Sanfelice in Historia Litteraria, 3:95.

23 Giannone, Pietro, The Civil History of the Kingdom of Naples, trans. Ogilvie, James, 2 vols. (London, 1729, 1731), 2:851–52Google Scholar.

24 Daily Journal (London), 18 March 1729; Daily Post (London), 9 July 1728.

25 Panzini, “Vita di Giannone,” 3:87–88.

26 Trevor-Roper, “Giannone,” 662–67; John Robertson, “Editor's Additional Note on the Identities of the Printer of Civil History and of Captain James Ogilvie,” History and Enlightenment, 283; Sale, Jonathan Richardson, 109; Charles Dalton, ed., English Army Lists and Commission Registers, 1661–1714, 6 vols. (London, 1892–1904), 4:182, 5:80, 82, 5:part 2, 57, 59n28; 6:339; Charles Dalton, ed., George I's Army 1714–27, 2 vols. (London, 1910), 1:345, 2:311–12.

27 Dalton, English Army Lists, 5:59, 60, 61n28. Ogilvie may be the “Captain James Ogilvie of Chandlie” who appears on the subscription list to [Pierre Le Pesant, Sieur de Boisguilbert], The life of Mary Stewart, Queen of Scotland and France, trans. James Freebairn, 2nd ed. (London, 1729), liii.

28 The plot involved convincing officers of the Guards regiments to surrender the Tower of London. Among them was Captain George Ogilvie of the Scots Guards, later a subscriber to the Civil History. Cruickshanks, Eveline and Erskine-Hill, Howard, The Atterbury Plot (Basingstoke, 2004), 134, 141CrossRefGoogle Scholar; “A Report from the Committee of the House of Commons Appointed to Examine Christopher Layer and Others,” in Reports from Committees of the House of Commons, vol. 1 (London, n.d.), 191; Viscount Falkland to James III 22 October 1721, Stuart Papers 55, fol. 55, Royal Archives, Windsor.

29 Viscount Falkland to James III 23 November 1723, RA SP 70, fol. 93; Viscount Falkland to James III 29 November 1723, RA SP 70, fol. 124.

30 Baron Stosch to Lord Carteret 30 October 1723, SP 85/14, fol. 467, The National Archives; Baron Stosch to the Duke of Newcastle 23 September 1724, TNA SP 85/15, fol. 202; Baron Stosch to the Duke of Newcastle 24 February 1725, TNA SP 85/15, fol. 288; John Ingamells, ed., A Dictionary of British and Irish Travelers in Italy, 1701–1800 (New Haven, 1997), 188, 347, 720.

31 Marquis of Ruvigny and Raineval, The Jacobite Peerage (Edinburgh, 1904), 49–50; Giannone, dedication to Civil History, vol. 2. Falkland's connection with the Irish regiments may explain the translation by Ogilvie of an account of the Stuart Restoration by Dermot O'Riordain, an Irishman in French service, appended to Robert Menteith, The History of the Troubles of Great Britain, trans. James Ogilvie (London, 1735).

32 See death notices in Lloyds Evening Post and British Chronicle (London), 27–29 October 1760; Gazetteer and London Daily Advertiser, 25 October 1760. Another Captain James Ogilvie of the Third Guards Regiment died before 1753: death notice in Public Advertiser (London), 9 June 1753. For an incident in which an Irish soldier in French service reportedly held a pistol to Captain Ogilvie's breast, see London Evening Post, 22–25 August 1752; London Evening Post, 14–16 September 1752; Read's Weekly (London), 29 August 1752, no. 1461.

33 “A List of the Names of the Subscribers,” b3–c4, in Giannone, Civil History, vol. 1.

34 Trevor-Roper, “Giannone,” 665–66.

35 “Vita di Pietro Giannone,” in Sergio Bertelli and Giuseppe Ricuperati, eds., Illumnisti Italiani, vol. 1, Opere di Pietro Giannone (Milan, 1971), 13–346; Panzini, “Vita di Giannone,” 3:1–13; Ricuperati, Giuseppe, L'Esperienza Civile e Religiosa di Pietro Giannone (Milan, 1970)Google Scholar; Dario Lungo, ed., All'Alba dell'Illuminismo: Cultura e Pubblico Studio nella Napoli Austriaca (Naples, 1997).

36 Agostino Lauro, Il Giurisdizionalismo PreGiannoniano nel Regno di Napoli (Rome, 1974), 27–35; Rafaello Ajello, Arcana Juris (diritto e politica nel Settecento italiano) (Naples, 1976), 229–72.

37 Paola Mattia Doria, La Vita Civile (Naples, 1729), 139. For Doria, see Giulia Belgioioso, Cultura a Napoli e Cartesianismo: Scritti sur G. Gimma, P. M. Doria, C. Cominale (Milan, 1992). For the Accademia Medina Coeli, see Ricuperati, L'Esperienza Civile e Religiosa, chap. 1; Harold Samuel Stone, Vico's Cultural History: The Production and Transmission of Ideas in Naples, 1685–1750 (Leiden, 1997), chap. 5.

38 Bertelli and Ricuperati, “Vita di Giannone,” 28–29.

39 Schlüter, Giesele, “San Gennaro oder der Ohnmacht der Vernunft: Zum Fall Pietro Giannone,” Romanische Forschungen 108, nos. 1/2 (1996): 50–88Google Scholar.

40 Bertelli and Ricuperati, “Vita di Giannone,” 83, 86, 102–3. For popular doggerel aimed at Giannone, see Bertelli, Giannoniana, 107–13.

41 Giannone, Civil History, 2:550–64.

42 On the Cartesian background, see Raffaele Ajello, “Cartesianismo e cultura oltremontana al tempo dell’Istoria Civile,” in Pietro Giannone e il suo Tempo, ed. Raffaele Ajello, 2 vols. (Naples, 1980), 1:1–181. For Malebranche, see Maurizio Torrini, “Il Cartesio di Giannone,” in Pietro Giannone e il suo Tempo 2:415–30. On Gassendi, see Antonia LoLordo, Pierre Gassendi and the Birth of Early Modern Philosophy (Cambridge, 2007), 3–4.

43 Giannone, Istoria Civile, 56-60.

44 Giannone, Civil History, 1:37.

45 Giannone, Civil History, 1:38.

46 Giannone, Civil History 1:39; Giannone, Istoria Civile, 1:119.

47 Giannone, Civil History, 1:40; Giannoni, Istoria Civile, 1:122. Henry VIII was styled “supreme head of the Church,” while his daughter accepted the title “supreme governor”; Giannone wrongly describes both as capo, or head.

48 Giannone, Civil History, 1:40.

49 Marsilius of Padua, Writings on the Empire: Defensor Minor and De Translatione Imperii, trans. Cary Nederman (Cambridge, 1993); Marsilius, The Defender of the Peace, trans. Annabel Brett (Cambridge, 2005); William of Ockham, A Short Discourse on Tyrannical Government, ed. A. S. McGrade, trans. John Kilcullen (Cambridge, 1992).

50 Julian H. Franklin, Jean Bodin and the Rise of Absolutist Theory (Cambridge, 1973); Andrew, Edward, “Jean Bodin on Sovereignty,” Republics of Letters 2, no. 2 (2011): 75–84Google Scholar.

51 Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, ed. Richard Tuck (Cambridge, 1996), chap. 37. Giannone read Hobbes's De Cive as a prisoner in 1747. Pietro Giannone, “Apologia de’ Teologi Scolastici,” in Bertelli and Ricuperati, Opere di Pietro Giannone, 804, 817.

52 Giannone, Civil History, 1:21, 22, 39.

53 [Guiseppe Sanfelice], Riflessioni Morali, e Theologiche sopra l'Istoria Civile del Regno di Napoli, 2 vols. (Cologne, 1728).

54 Pietro Giannone, “Professione de Fe,” in Panzini, Opere Postume, 2:9, 17.

55 Bod. MS Rawl. D. 555.

56 Bertelli and Ricuperati,“Vita di Giannone,” 174–75.

57 Bertelli, Giannoniana, 71–72, 261, 263.

58 Bertelli and Ricuperati, “Vita di Giannone,” 183–85.

59 Bertelli, Giannoniana, 269.

60 Bertelli and Ricuperati, “Vita di Giannone,” 186–88; Panzini, “Vita di Giannone,” 3:103–4; [Pietro Giannone], “Ex Operibus Selectis Ioannis Hardvini [. . .] Explicatio Numi sub Ludovico XII Francorum Rege Cusi Inscriptique Perdam Babilonis Nomen,” in Jacques Auguste de Thou, Historiarum sui Temporis, 7 vols. (London, 1733), 7:33–41; Samuel Kinser, The Works of Jacques-Auguste de Thou (The Hague, 1966), 57–73.

61 Giuseppe Ricuperati, La Città Terrena di Pietro Giannone (Florence, 2001).

62 Panzini, Opere Postume, 3:5–27.

63 Giovanni Antonio Bianchi, Della Potestà, e della Politia della Chiesa [. . .] Contre le Nuovi Opinioni di Pietro Giannone, 6 vols. (Rome, 1745–51), 1:chaps. 1–2.

64 John Robertson, “Enlightenment, Reform and Monarchy in Italy,” in Enlightened Reform in Southern Europe and Its Atlantic Colonies, c. 1750–1830, ed. Gabriel Paquette (Farnham, 2009), 23–32.

65 Bertelli, Giannoniana, vii.

66 This phrase appears in a 1716 proposal by the Nonjurors for a Concordat with the Greek Orthodox churches, cited in George Williams, The Orthodox Church of the East in the Eighteenth Century: Being the Correspondence between the Eastern Patriarchs and the Nonjuring Bishops (London, 1868), 6.

67 Harro Höpfl, ed., Luther and Calvin on Secular Authority (Cambridge, 1991); Höpfl, The Christian Polity of John Calvin (Cambridge, 1982), chap. 7.

68 For a recent discussion, see Peter Marshall, Heretics and Believers: A History of the English Reformation (New Haven, 2017), chap. 14.

69 Richard Hooker, Of the Lawes of Ecclesiastical Polity, ed. A. S. McGrade (Cambridge, 1989), 131, 133. The continuing impact of the Reformation on the eighteenth-century church is stressed in Robert G. Ingram, Reformation without End: Religion, Politics and the Past in Post-Revolutionary England (Manchester, 2018).

70 See John Spurr, The Restoration Church of England, 1646–1689 (New Haven, 1992), chap. 3; Collins, Jeffrey R., “The Restoration Bishops and the Royal Supremacy,” Church History 68, no. 3 (1999): 549–80CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

71 Jacqueline Rose, Godly Supremacy in Restoration England: The Politics of the Royal Supremacy (Cambridge, 2011), chap. 3.

72 Thomas Lathbury, A History of the Nonjurors (London, 1845); J. H. Overton, The Nonjurors: Their Lives, Principles and Writings (London, 1902); Henry Broxap, The Later Nonjurors (Cambridge, 1924); J. C. D. Clark, English Society, 1660–1832: Religion, Ideology and Politics during the Ancien Regime, 2nd ed. (Cambridge, 2000), 83–105; Richard Cornwall, Visible and Apostolic: The Constitution of the Church in High-Church Anglican and Non-Juror Thought (Newark, DE, 1993); Brent Sirota, The Christian Monitors: The Church of England and the Age of Benevolence, 1680–1730 (New Haven, 2014), 153–64; John William Klein, The Mental World of the English Nonjurors (Bloomington, 2019).

73 Overton, Nonjurors, 95.

74 [Jeremy Collier], A Brief Essay concerning the Independency of Church Power (London, 1692), 12.

75 Henry Dodwell, A Defence of the Vindication of the Deprived Bishops (London, 1695), 77; Klein, Mental World of Nonjurors, chap. 3.

76 Records of the New Consecrations (n.p., [1713]), 1–3, in Rawlinson Prints A.5, fols. 60–63v., Bodleian Library. Rawlinson may also have published A Declaration Made by the Right Reverend Dr. George Hickes, Concerning the Faith and Religion in which he lived and intended to die: and referred to in his Will (London, 1743), written in 1696.

77 Thomas Lathbury, A History of the Convocation of the Church of England from the Earliest Period to the Year 1742 (London, 1853), 332–33.

78 [Francis Atterbury], A Letter to a Convocation-Man Concerning the Rights, Powers and Priviledges of that Body (London, 1697), 17–18. This pamphlet was co-written with the lawyer Sir Bartholomew Shower, a close friend of George Hickes.

79 [Atterbury], Letter, 50; G. V. Bennett, The Tory Crisis in Church and State, 1688–1730: The Career of Francis Atterbury, Bishop of Rochester (Oxford, 1975), chap. 3; Mark Goldie, “The Nonjurors, Episcopacy, and the Origins of the Convocation Controversy,” in Ideology and Conspiracy: Aspects of Jacobitism 1689–1759, ed. Eveline Cruickshanks (Edinburgh, 1982), 15–35; Cornwall, Visible and Apostolic, chap. 4; Brent Sirota, “The Leviathan Is Not Safely to Be Angered: The Convocation Controversy, Country Ideology, and Anglican High Churchmanship,” in Religion and the State: Europe and North America in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries, ed. Josh B. Stein and Sargon B. Donabed (Lanham, 2012), 41–61; Sirota, Christian Monitors, 191–203.

80 He was nonetheless accused of this by William Wake in The Authority of Christian Princes Over their Ecclesiastical Synods Asserted (London, 1697). See also William Wake, An Appeal to All True Members of the Church of England, In Behalf of the King's Ecclesiastical Supremacy (London, 1697), 22; [Francis Atterbury] The Rights, Powers and Priviledges of an English Convocation, Stated and Vindicated (London, 1700).

81 David Parrish, Jacobitism and Anti-Jacobitism in the British Atlantic World, 1688–1727 (Woodbridge, 2017), chap. 4. Marston was defended by Daniel Defoe in The Case of Protestant Dissenters in Carolina (London, 1706), 57–67.

82 Jeremy Collier, An Ecclesiastical History of Great Britain, Chiefly of England, 2 vols. (London, 1708, 1714), 2:81; Andrew Starkie, “Contested Histories of the English Church: Gilbert Burnet and Jeremy Collier,” in The Uses of History in Early Modern England, ed. Paulina Kewes (San Marino, 2006), 329–45.

83 George Hickes, The Constitution of the Catholick Church (London, 1716), 62–63, 64.

84 Hickes, Constitution, 75, 76–77.

85 Hickes, 79.

86 Hickes, 153.

87 Hickes, 91, 113–17.

88 Collier, Ecclesiastical History, 1:139, 141, 445, 527.

89 Norman Sykes, William Wake, Archbishop of Canterbury (1657–1737), 2 vols. (Cambridge, 1957), 1:252–314; J. H. Lupton, William Wake and the Project of Union (1717–1720) between the Gallican and Anglican Churches (London, 1896). John Potter, Wake's successor as archbishop, showed an awareness of Du Pin's ideas in A Discourse of Church Government (London, 1707), 10–12, 317, but referred only to Du Pin's historical work, Monumenta vetera ad Donatistarum Historiam pertinenta (Paris, 1700), without mentioning the author. For the influence of Du Pin on English Catholicism, see Glickman, Gabriel, “Gothic History and Catholic Enlightenment in the Works of Charles Dodd (1672–1742),” Historical Journal 54, no. 2 (2011): 34–69CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

90 Louis Ellies Du Pin, De Antiquae Ecclesiae Disciplina (London, 1691), 433–44.

91 Giannone, Istoria Civile, 1:47-52.

92 Bertelli and Ricuperati, Opere di Pietro Giannone, 204–5n5; Giannone, Civil History, 1:38, 2:664.

93 The Nonjuror Charles Leslie translated the Four Articles into English in 1702: [Charles Leslie], The Case of the Regale and of the Pontificat Stated (London, 1702).

94 Louis Ellies Du Pin, Traité de la Puissance Ecclésiastique et Temporelle (n.p., 1707), 3.

95 Andrew Starkie, The Church of England and the Bangorian Controversy, 1716–21 (Woodbridge, 2007); William Gibson, Enlightened Prelate: Bishop Benjamin Hoadly, 1676–1761 (Cambridge, 2004), chap. 5; Benjamin Hoadly, A Preservative Against the Principles and Practices of the Nonjurors, Both in Church and State (London, 1716).

96 Thomas Brett, The Independency of the Church Upon the State As to Its Pure Spiritual Powers (London, 1717), 14.

97 [Matthias Earbery Sr.], The Old English Constitution Vindicated (London, 1717), 86–87; Starkie, Church of England, chap. 4.

98 [Richard Rawlinson], The Conduct of the Rev. Dr. White Kennett, Dean of Peterborough (London, 1717).

99 Broxap, Later Nonjurors, 326–27.

100 Robert Gordoun, T. Mawman, Richard Rawlinson and G. Smith to Thomas Wagstaffe, 23 April 1742, RA SP 241, fols. 45, 47–48, with attachment in RA SP 243, fols. 92–92a; James Francis Edward Stuart to Robert Gordoun, Thomas Brett, T. Mawman, Richard Rawlinson and G. Smith, draft copies, April to July, 1742, RA, SP 241, fol. 49, RA SP 243, fols. 91–92, corrected copy, August 1, 1742, RA SP 241, fols. 50–51.

101 William Warburton, The Alliance between Church and State (London, 1736).

102 Taylor, Stephen, “William Warburton and the Alliance of Church of State,” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 43, no. 2 (1992): 271–86CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Ingram, Reformation without End, chap. 15.

103 John Parker Lawson, History of the Scottish Episcopal Church from the Restoration to the Present Time (Edinburgh, 1843), 253–58; John Skinner, An Ecclesiastical History of Scotland, 2 vols. (London, 1788), 2:646–47.

104 Quoted in Skinner, Ecclesiastical History, 2:643

105 For the virtual schism over independency in the diocese of Aberdeen, see Anthony Aufrère, ed., The Lockhart Papers, 2 vols. (London, 1817), 2:101–2, 123–24. For intellectual parallels between Scotland and Naples, see John Robertson, The Case for the Enlightenment: Scotland and Naples, 1680–1760 (Cambridge, 2005).

106 Bruce E. Steiner, Samuel Seabury: A Study in the High Church Tradition (Athens, OH, 1971), 196–97, 417–23; Ross N. Hebb, Samuel Seabury and Charles Inglis: Two Bishops, Two Churches (Cranbury, 2010), 63; but see Nora Rhoden, Revolutionary Anglicanism: The Colonial Church of England Clergy during the American Revolution (Basingstoke, 1999), 144–45.

107 See Walter McIntosh Merrill, From Statesman to Philosopher: A Study in Bolingbroke's Deism (New York, 1950).

108 Henry St. John, Viscount Bolingbroke, “Concerning authority in matters of religion,” in The Philosophical Works of Henry St. John, Viscount Bolingbroke, 5 vols. (London, 1754), 3:1–332.

109 Bolingbroke, “Concerning authority,” 3:243–44.

110 Bolingbroke, 3:246–7.

111 Bolingbroke, 3:180, 182.

112 Bolingbroke, 3:330.

113 Patricia Cradock, Young Edward Gibbon, Gentleman of Letters (Baltimore, 1982), 68–71; J. G. A. Pocock, Barbarism and Religion, vol. 2: Narratives of Civil Government (Cambridge, 1999), 29–71; John Robertson, “Gibbon and Giannone,” in Edward Gibbon: Bicentenary Essays, ed. David Womersley (Oxford, 1997), 3–19.

114 Edward Gibbon, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, 2nd ed., 3 vols. (London, 1781), 2:222n111; Edward Gibbon, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, 3rd ed., 12 vols. (London, 1788–9), 5:104n30.

115 Edward Gibbon, Memoirs of My Life, ed. Betty Radice (London, 1991), 102.

116 Edward Gibbon, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire: Volume the First (London, 1776), 526–27.

117 Gibbon, History of the Decline and Fall (1776), 1:546–50.

118 Henry Edwards Davis, An Examination of the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Chapters of Mr. Gibbon's History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (London, 1778), 132–36, 205–64; David Womersley, Gibbon and the “Watchmen of the Holy City”: The Historian and His Reputation, 1776–1815 (Oxford, 2002), 43–99, 112–16. Henry Dodwell's essay “De Martyrum Paucitate” appears in his Dissertationes Cyprianicae ([Oxford, 1682]), 56–90. Gibbon replied to Davis's accusation of plagiarism in A Vindication of Some Passages in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Chapters of the History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (London, 1779), 89–90.

119 Gibbon, Decline and Fall (1781), 2:213.

120 Fruchtman, Jack Jr., “The Apocalyptic Politics of Richard Price and Joseph Priestley: A Study in Late Eighteenth Century English Republican Millennialism,” Transactions of the American Philosophical Society 73, no. 4 (1983): 1–125CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Garrett, Clarke, “Joseph Priestley, the Millennium and the French Revolution,” Journal of the History of Ideas 34, no. 1 (1973): 53–66CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Isabel Rivers and David L. Wyckes, eds., Joseph Priestley: Scientist, Philosopher and Theologian (Oxford, 2008); Robert Schofield, The Enlightened Joseph Priestley: A Study of His Life and Work from 1773 to 1804 (University Park, PA, 2004); Jan Golinski, Science as Public Culture: Chemistry and Enlightenment in Britain, 1760–1820 (Cambridge, 1992), chap. 3.

121 Joseph Priestley, An Essay on the First Principles of Government, and on the Nature of Political, Civil and Religious Liberty, 2nd ed. (London, 1771), 141, 149–51, 156–58. This book inspired Jeremy Bentham's call for separation of church and state; see Canovan, Margaret, “The Un-Benthamite Utilitarianism of Joseph Priestley,” Journal of the History of Ideas 45, no. 3 (1984): 435–50CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

122 Joseph Priestley, Considerations on Church-Authority; Occasion'd by Dr. Balguy's Sermon, on that Subject (London, 1769), iv.

123 Priestley, Considerations on Church-Authority, vii.

124 Priestley, 24.

125 Priestley, 29–30.

126 Priestley, 73.

127 Joseph Priestley, An History of the Corruptions of Christianity, 2 vols. (London, 1782), 1:xvii. For its impact, see F. C. Mather, High-Church Prophet: Bishop Samuel Horsley (1733–1806) and the Caroline Tradition in the Later Georgian Church (Oxford, 1992), 55–61.

128 [Jacob Vernet], Anecdotes Ecclésiastiques [. . .] Tirées de l'Histoire du Royaume de Naples, de Giannone (Amsterdam, 1738). Priestley also read Giannone in Italian: John Towill Rutt, ed., Life and Correspondence of Joseph Priestley, 2 vols. (London, 1832), 2:337.

129 Pietro Giannone, Il Triregno, in Bertelli and Ricuperati, Opere di Pietro Giannone, 593–653.

130 Priestley, Corruptions of Christianity, 2:441–66, at 462.

131 Priestley had a further spat with Gibbon over the immortality of the soul; see Joseph Priestley, Discourses on the Evidence of Revealed Religion (London, 1794), 412–20; Turnbull, Paul, “Gibbon's Exchange with Joseph Priestley,” Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies 14, no. 2 (1991): 139–58Google Scholar; Womersley, Gibbon and the Watchmen, 157–58.

132 Graham, Jenny, “Revolutionary in Exile: The Emigration of Joseph Priestley to America, 1794–1804,” Transactions of the American Philosophical Society 85, no. 2 (1995): 1–213CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

133 Schofield, Enlightened Priestley, 236n40.

134 Daniel Dreisbach, Thomas Jefferson and the Wall of Separation between Church and State (New York, 2002), 79–82.

135 James Burgh, Crito, or Essays on Various Subjects, 2 vols. (London, 1767), 2:119.

136 Burgh, Crito, 1:xi.

137 Joseph Priestley, A General History of the Christian Church, from the Fall of the Empire to the Present Time, 4 vols. (Northumberland, PA, 1802–5), 1:xix–xx, xxxviii; Rutt, Life and Correspondence of Priestley, 2:348. For copies of Ogilvie's translation in American public libraries, see A Catalogue of Books Belonging to the Library Company of Philadelphia (Philadelphia, 1741), 12; Laws of the Redwood-Library Company (Newport, 1764), 4.

138 Joseph Priestley, A General History of the Christian Church to the Fall of the Western Empire, 2nd ed., 2 vols. (Northumberland, PA, 1803), 1:x.

139 Priestley, General History, 4:323; quotation at 329.

140 Priestley, 1:sig a2.

141 Dreisbach, Thomas Jefferson; Philip Hamburger, Separation of Church and State (Cambridge, MA, 2002); Steven K. Green, The Second Disestablishment: Church and State in Nineteenth-Century America (Oxford, 2010); Witte, John Jr., “Facts and Fiction about the History of Separation of Church and State,” Journal of Church and State 48, no. 1 (2006): 15–45CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Leonard W. Levy, The Clause: Religion and the First Amendment (New York, 1986); Edmund Morgan, Roger Williams: The Church and the State (New York, 1967); McLoughlin, William G., “Isaac Backus and the Separation of Church and State in America,” American Historical Review 73, no. 5 (1968): 1392–1413CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

142 On this subject, Nathan O. Hatch, The Democratization of American Christianity (New Haven, 1989) has been challenged by Amanda Porterfield, Conceived in Doubt: Religion and Politics in the New American Nation (Chicago, 2012) and Eric R. Schlereth, An Age of Infidels: The Politics of Religious Controversy in the Early United States (Philadelphia, 2013). See also Kidd, Colin, “Civil Theology and Church Establishments in Revolutionary America,” Historical Journal 42, no. 4 (1999): 1007–26CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Daniel Dreisbach, Religion and Politics in the Early Republic: Jasper Adams and the Church-State Debate (Lexington, 2015).