Jacob Bauthumley or Bottomley (1613–1692) was an English radical religious writer, usually identified as a central figure among the Ranters. He served as part of the New Model Army, leaving in March 1650. After the Restoration of 1660, he took up a job as a librarian in Leicester, where he produced a book of extracts from John Foxe, published in 1676.

Biography

Bauthumley is known principally for ''The Light and Dark Sides of God'' (1650). This work was regarded as blasphemous for its

pantheistic Pantheism is the belief that reality, the universe and the cosmos are identical with divinity and a supreme supernatural being or entity, pointing to the universe as being an immanent creator deity still expanding and creating, which ha ...

tendencies, including the following: After the

Blasphemy Act Laws prohibiting blasphemy and blasphemous libel in the United Kingdom date back to the mediaeval times as common law and in some special cases as enacted legislation. The common law offences of blasphemy and blasphemous libel were formally abolis ...

of August 1650, he was arrested, convicted, and burned through the tongue. Bauthumley had served in the Parliamentarian Army;Radical Uses of History in the Restoration
/ref> Norman Cohn states that he was in the Army while writing the pamphlet, and took part in Ranter and

Quaker Quakers are people who belong to a historically Protestant Christian set of Christian denomination, denominations known formally as the Religious Society of Friends. Members of these movements ("theFriends") are generally united by a belie ...

meetings in Leicestershire in the mid-1650s. Christopher Hill says that he left the Army in March 1650. His family had earlier suffered ostracism, for permitting sermons by

Jeremiah Burroughes Jeremiah Burroughs (sometimes Burroughes; 1599 – London, 13 November, 1646) was an English Congregationalist and a well-known Puritan preacher. Biography Burroughs studied at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, and was graduated M.A. in 1624, bu ...

to be said in their house; he was a shoemaker. After the Restoration of 1660 he was a librarian in Leicester. He produced a book of extracts from John Foxe, published in 1676.

Views

Bauthumley denied that the

Bible The Bible (from Koine Greek , , 'the books') is a collection of religious texts or scriptures that are held to be sacred in Christianity, Judaism, Samaritanism, and many other religions. The Bible is an anthologya compilation of texts o ...

was the Word of God, and that

Christ Jesus, likely from he, יֵשׁוּעַ, translit=Yēšūaʿ, label= Hebrew/Aramaic ( AD 30 or 33), also referred to as Jesus Christ or Jesus of Nazareth (among other names and titles), was a first-century Jewish preacher and religi ...

was more divine than other men. He considered that the real Devil lay in human nature, while God dwells in the flesh of man. Historian

E. P. Thompson Edward Palmer Thompson (3 February 1924 – 28 August 1993) was an English historian, writer, socialist and peace campaigner. He is best known today for his historical work on the radical movements in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, in ...

calls his views 'quasi-pantheistic' in their re-definition of God and Christ, and quotes A. L. Morton to the effect that this is the central Ranter doctrine.'' Witness Against the Beast: William Blake and the Moral Law'' (1993), p. 26.

Selected publications

''The Light and Dark Sides of God, Or, A Plain and Brief Discourse of the Light Side''
(1650)

Notes

{{DEFAULTSORT:Bauthumley, Jacob 1613 births 1692 deaths 17th-century English writers 17th-century English male writers English criminals English male writers Pantheists People convicted of blasphemy Ranters New Model Army personnel