Nathaniel Holmes

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Nathaniel Holmes or Homes[1] (1599-1678) was an English Independent theologian and preacher. He has been described as “Puritan writer of great ability”[2].

Contents

[edit] Life

He graduated with a B.A. from Exeter College, Oxford in 1620; and with an M.A. from Magdalen Hall, Oxford in 1623. He later founded an Independent church, with Henry Burton[3]; he was rector of St Mary Staining, Oat Lane, Aldersgate, in London to 1662[4]. In 1644 his Gospell-Musick defended and promoted psalm-singing, and reprinted the preface to the Bay Psalm Book[5].

A convinced millenarian, he preached to the House of Commons in 1641, under the influence of Thomas Brightman[6]. In 1650, in another sermon to the Commons after the battle of Dunbar, he cited the Book of Daniel and Book of Revelation[7]. He has been considered a follower of Johann Heinrich Alsted[8].

He with Henry Jessey corresponded with Menasseh ben Israel, about the official return of Jews to England, and the supposed Lost Tribes found in North America[9] This interest was prompted by John Dury’s interest[10], and was shared with others[11]. His philo-Semitism has been noted, for example, by Werner Sombart[12].

[edit] Views

His 1640 work on usury was against the permissive line of William Ames[13]. He was against political ‘levelling’[14]. He defended infant baptism, and attacked Thomas Goodwin on salvation by works[15].

He wrote against witchcraft[16], proposing an influential three-fold scheme of possession[17], and astrology, regretting its prevalence[18].

[edit] Works

  • Usury is Injury (1640)[19]
  • Gospell Musick (1644)
  • Daemonologie and Theologie (1650)
  • The Resurrection Revealed, or The Dawning of the Day Star
  • Some Glimpses of Israel's Call Approaching
  • Revelation Revealed (1653)
  • Commentary on Canticles

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ Also Nathanael.
  2. ^ [1], a Wesleyan site.
  3. ^ Concise Dictionary of National Biography
  4. ^ Mentioned in Pepys Diary[2].
  5. ^ [3], taken from The Enigma of the Bay Psalm Book (1956), p. 19.
  6. ^ A Westminster Bibliography Part 5
  7. ^ Hill, The English Bible and the Seventeenth-Century Revolution (1993), p.301.
  8. ^ PDF, p. 7.
  9. ^ PDF, p. 49 and p. 53.
  10. ^ The Readmission Of The Jews To England
  11. ^ PDF, pp.16-17, mentioning also Samuel Hartlib and Margaret Fell.
  12. ^ PDF, p. 175.
  13. ^ Hill, Bible, p. 169.
  14. ^ Hill, The World Turned Upside Down, p. 122.
  15. ^ PDF, p. 325.
  16. ^ Keith Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic, p. 623, citing Daemonologie of 1650.
  17. ^ PDF, p. 119.
  18. ^ Thomas p. 361, citing Plain Dealing, a sermon of 1652.
  19. ^ Usury is injury. Cleared in an examination of its best apologie, alleaged by a countrey minister, out of Doctor Ames, in his Cases of conscience, as a party and patron of that apologie. Both answered here, by Nath: Holmes, Dr. in Divinity. [WorldCat.org]