Free spirits
The Ranters, as their enemies called them, flourished during the English Civil War. They were social revolutionaries and mystics, convinced that divinity was only to be found within the individual human being. They also believed that those in possession of such divinity were free spirits for whom absolutely nothing, however unconventional or shocking, could be sinful.
All things common
The most celebrated of all the Ranters was a renegade Anabaptist preacher named Abiezer Coppe (1619-1672). He identified himself with the most destitute, the most wretched, the most oppressed:
Mine eares are filled brim full with cryes of poore prisoners, Newgate, Ludgate cryes (of late) are seldome out on mine eares.Those dolefull cryes, Bread, bread, bread for the Lords sake, pierce mine eares, and heart, I can no longer forbeare. [1]
Coppe advocated an extreme form of levelling, where all property would be relinquished by the individual, and everything would be held in common.
Give, give, give, give up, give up your houses, horses, goods, gold, Lands, give up, account nothing your own, have ALL THINGS common, or els the plague of God will rot and consume all that you have.
He believed that the new millennium was imminent, in which property rights would be abolished, social equality would flourish, and the divinity inherent in mankind would find full expression:
It’s but yet a little while, and the strongest, yea, the seemingly purest propriety [property], which may mostly plead priviledge and Prerogative from Scripture, and carnall reason; shall be confounded and plagued into community and universality. And ther’s a most glorious design in it: and equality, community, and universall love; shall be in request to the utter confounding of abominable pride, murther, hypocrisie, tyranny and oppression, &c. [2]
‘Plaguy holiness’ confounded
Coppe rejected both ‘sword-levelling’ and ‘digging-levelling’, in favour of an ecstatic spiritual rebirth which would be achieved by direct and intense social interaction with the common people.So he made a point of swearing, kissing beggars in the streets, consorting with gypsies, living promiscuously, and confounding ‘plaguy holiness and righteousness’ by ‘skipping, leaping, dancing, like one of the fools.’
For Coppe the man of sin was a ‘brisk, spruce, neat, self-seeking, fine finiking fellow.’
Coppe rejected the pomp and ritual of all organised religion, in favour of a life based on the most simple and direct communitarian principles: ‘The true breaking of bread – is from house to house, &c. Neighbours [in singleness of heart] saying if I have any bread, &c. it’s thine, I will not call it mine own, it’s common.These are true Communicants, and this is the true breaking of bread among men.’ [3]
This was dangerous stuff, condemned on all sides.Coppe was imprisoned and twice forced to publish recantations (although contemporary accounts doubted their sincerity). He died in 1672, of illnesses produced by ‘drinking and whoring’, as his enemies reported.
Sources
Abiezer Coppe, Selected Writings, ed. Andrew Hopton, 1987.
Christopher Hill, The World Turned Upside Down, 1972.
[1] Abiezer Coppe, A Fiery Flying Roll, 1649, I, 2.3
[2] Abiezer Coppe, A Fiery Flying Roll, 1649, II, 2.6; 6.2
[3] Abiezer Coppe, A Fiery Flying Roll, 1649, II, 5.5; 7.1; 8.9
