Against Formality: One Aspect of the English Revolution

Abstract

This chapter continues the exploration of ideas of formality and its antithesis as contexts for mid-seventeenth-century radicalism and utopianism. The attack on formality reached a new intensity in the decades of the English Revolution (1640–60) being embedded in legislation against formality as part of the Blasphemy Act of 1650. This essay suggests that antiformalism opened up but, in key ways, also closed down radical possibilities in the period. Concern about formality is shown to be a central feature of both mainstream reformation thinking and that of its critics. It epitomised those attitudes which set the letter against the spirit, form against substance, the law against grace, fleshly invention against the things of God. But wrestling with antiformalism also proved frustrating and complex.