to be one of the "poysonable"
sources of "Familisme, Antinomianisme, and Enthusiasme."[2] He charges
that "Waldesso," as he calls him, teaches men that the Scriptures have
been supplanted by the inner Light, in fact that "Scripture shines only
as a light in a dark place until the Day-star arises in the heart, and
that then man hath no more need to seeke that of the holy Scripture
which departs of it selfe, as the light of a candle departs when the
Sunne-beames enter, even as Moses departed at the presence of Christ
and the Law at the presence of the Gospel."[3]
Ochino and Vermigli spent six important years in England from 1547 to
1553, when persecution under Mary forced them to flee. They were far
more under the influence of Calvin at this period than under that of
their former friend de Valdes, but they both with the fire and
intensity of their Italian nature--especially Ochino in his
sermons--drove home to the hearts and consciences of their hearers the
way of salvation by faith and the absolute necessity of inner
experience and interior religion.
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II. JOHN EVERARD
Dr. John Everard of Clare College, Cambridge, was clearly one of the
earliest and one of the most interesting carriers of these ideas, and
in his case it is not difficult to discover the influences which shaped
the course of his thought and suggested the general lines of his
message. He was born about 1575--the birth year of Jacob
Boehme--though all early biographical details are lacking. He had a
long student period at Clare College, receiving his degree of B.A. in
1600, M.A. in 1607, and D.D. in 1619. He was deeply versed in the
great mystics, and always reveals in his sermons the influence of
Plotinus and Dionysius the Areopagite, and no less the influence of
Eckhart, Tauler, and the _Theologia Germanica_. But at some period of
his life he tapped a new source and came into possession of a fresh
group of live and suggestive ideas which influenced all the thinking of
his later stage. His translations, some of which are in MS. and some
in printed form, furnish a clue to the main sources of his ideas, which
present a striking parallelism with those held by the continental
spiritual Reformers of the sixteenth century. He was possessed of
original power and of penetrating insight, with "eyes of his own," but
no one can fail to see that he had read and pondered the writings of
these submerged Reformers, and that in a country remote from
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