That’s great Caleb Fogg – that’s so good that you’ve taken a look at that stuff . I there are people highly trained in some branch of philosophy here as it relates to theology – metaphysics is a hot one, ethics less so. But it’s so nice to have others interested in history too. And good research about Guernsey using Google maps to check out Amy’s story - the Nazi’s got a lot closer to the UK than some people realise
Yes regarding sources – I do sometimes give them when it’s appropriate; but not always. A lot of the time – as here – I don’t; bother because… well if I always gave sources in detail and gave you my proper source criticism I’d be giving away what i hep to write in my book. It’s the nature of the beast when you post on a website that you don’t; give everything away – and most people won’t; read the stuff anyway.
If you look at the original C of E Universalism thread that Rev Drew started you will see me thinking through specific sources and making conjectures from these and then realising that my conjectures and /or the conjectures of other posters are improbable and coming up with better ones to test against the evidence. Three examples – and note that I couldn’t get to a library when I was first doing that research and so had to depend on Internet primary sources and check that the sources were presented in the same way in at least three independent academic websites –
First it took me a time before I could find the full text of the 42nd article and find any text for the 41st article and 40th article (all were abrogated by Elizabeth’s convocation). When I found all three a lot of things fell into place that were up in the air for me until then; and when I compared the 42nd article closely with the sources it was based on some other surprising/unexpected conclusions occurred to me.
Second, Drew found a passage from Martin Bucer showing what a tolerant man he was which lead heand I to think Bucer had something to do with the abrogation of the 42nd article in terms of his posthumous influence. And this seemed an excellent hypotheses since Bucer had been Matthew Parker’s colleague – the Archbishop of Canterbury who chaired the convocation where it was suppressed. However, I still had to keep an open mind; and it was an unexpected find when I was reading a scholarly article by Morwena Ludlow about whether the Anabaptists Hans Denck was a universalist that started to make me sceptical and check out Martin Bucer more closely– so I now am certain that Bucer would not have advocated the tolerance of universalism - although he would not have approved of the execution or imprisonment of universalists.
Third and final, I was persuaded for a very short time that Elizabeth could not have inclined towards tolerance of universalism – because the Marxist historian Christopher Hill had cited a speech by her made to Parliament in the early 1580s in which she seemed to approve strongly of hellfire and damnation (and Hill of course decided that this was to be expected of manipulative Queen who wanted to keep her people in their place). However, when I checked the source and the context of this speech it is very clear that Elizabeth is actually chiding her Calvinist Parliament over two issue close to her heart at the time – there are very strong reasons indeed for thinking her words are said sarcastically/ironically).