Lodowicke Muggleton - Lodowicke Muggleton and The Book of Revelation

Lodowicke Muggleton and The Book of Revelation

Lodowicke Muggleton wrote two commentaries on the Book of Revelation. William Lamont sees the first work as part of a power struggle with Laurence Clarkson, but admits, "If Muggleton's motivation in writing his comments on Chapter XI of Revelation was to complete the doing-down of Clarkson, it is therefore, a signal failure." So there is room for doubt if this is the whole explanation. Muggleton himself says his intention is to prophesy anew: "whereby is unfolded, and plainly declared, the whole counsel of God concerning Himself, the Devil and all Mankind from the foundation of the world to all eternity. Never before revealed." Muggleton stresses he writes "without the help of other men's labours, but only as the revelation did arise in me from the seed of faith".

Hence Muggleton's first book is not a commentary upon Revelation but something new which uses Revelation as a starting point. Is Muggleton entirely prophecy? It is hard to see what value 'theology' would have in a Muggletonian setting since such a project would surely be contaminated by unclean human reason.

Muggleton starts his consideration of Chapter 11 at Chapter 10, verse 8 where an angel hands John of Patmos a little book which he must eat with the command, "Thou must prophesy again." This is a direct repetition of Ezekiel's commissioning as a prophet. As Ezekiel, so John. As John, so Muggleton.

Muggleton seeks not only to explain the text of Revelation on its own terms but also to appropriate the text as a foundation for the Muggletonian faith. "Post-modernism is reader-orientated and gives readers the power of interpreting a text that, in modern terms, belongs to the author." In that sense, Muggleton is an empowered post-modern. He thought so, too. "Herein is the glory of God the more seen, in that he has chosen the weak things to bring down the strong; the foolish things to confound the wise; and the things that seem as if they were not, to bring to nought things that are." This is the Muggletonian faith working from the margins. But his important point is about the glory of God being seen more clearly in what might otherwise be mistaken as being the works of humankind. Austin Farrer says that when interpreting Revelation "we need constantly to ask ourselves, 'Would St. John admit that this is what he meant?'" and Muggleton seems to understand John perfectly at this juncture.

Revelation is believed to have been written slightly before 100 CE. It was written by an impassioned and embittered Christian exile on the island of Patmos. We know him only as John the Divine. The book purports to be addressed to seven churches on the mainland (now Turkey) warning them against laxity and compromise with Roman authority, Greek and gnostic philosophy, and with Christian schismatics. His message is bleakly fundamentalist; about being ready for the imminent end of the world. It is a brutal narrative for a brutalised community. Luther could find little of the Christ in it. But Gerd Luedemann tells us more about the historical background. "This had unpleasant aspects, and destroys once and for all the idea that circumstances in earliest Chistianity were pure and ideal. Polemic between the two sides reached such a pitch that sometimes it is no longer even clear what the substantive or theological issues were ... Christians threatened to tear one another limb from limb, caught up in a mishmash of mutual misunderstanding, violence but also self-assertion. It is this last phrase – self-assertion – that perfectly characterises John the Divine. The view he wished to impose upon others is that the old earth and the old heaven will soon pass away and a New Jerusalem will 'descend' to enable the elect to dwell in God's real presence. God is working his purpose out precisely because, to ordinary human understanding, the very opposite seems to be happening. John lays bare, without a trace of sentiment, that people will only be prepared to leave vengeance to the Lord if they are certain that, when the Lord finally does come, vengeance is what he'll bring. Revelation is a story of how apparent delay and present weakness will only make the final judgment more emphatic. Revelation is, in Elisabeth Schuessler Fiorenza's view, a 'vision of a just world.' Some might argue that John seeks vindication rather than justice and at a cost of the entire universe going up in flames along the way. Alison Jack says "Schuessler Fiorenza is keen to rehabilitate Revelation for all readers. Other feminist critics are less sanguine about the possibility of the recovery of the text."

It is perhaps advisable to remember that there is a very real sense in which Muggleton's everyday experiences were much closer to those of John the Divine than ours are. In 1653, the weekly newspaper Mercurius Politicus sent their ace-reporter Marchamont Nedham down Bow Lane to investigate 'the world of the Muggletonians'. Christopher Hill tells us what he found. "Nedham took 'a citizen of worth out of Bread Street' with him, and at a chandler's shop in Great Trinity Lane, 'against one Mr Millis a brown-baker, near Bow Lane end' found 'a couple of tailors together with two women and an old country plain man of Essex ... at the top of an old house in a cockloft.' He bought a 12d pamphlet from them." Muggleton also cursed the citizen of worth, presumably free of charge.

At first sight, it might seem surprising that Muggleton is impressed by John the Divine's visions. After all, the proof that John Reeve's calling had been authentic was supposed to have been because it was by voice of God, 'as a man speaks to his friend' and not by visions which might be self-deceiving. In Jewish practice of John's time, visions came through meditation upon a message and a favourite vehicle was the first chapter of the Book of Ezekiel which is a centre-piece of Revelation. John Sweet explains how the idea is handled in Revelation. When John is spoken to, it is to explain the meaning of what he has seen; just as Mary Magdalene had seen Jesus in the garden but did not recognise him until she heard his voice. When John the Divine witnesses the Lamb he sees weakness and defeat but the voice explains it all as power and victory. John is handling his own sources here. In the Book of Daniel 12:4 "But you, Daniel, shut up the words, and seal the book, until the time of the end."

Lodowicke Muggleton was aware that Revelation is not simply reportage of visions. He likens the book to a heavenly building upon a foundation. This emphasis on structure as a key to meaning in Revelation has modern adherents, too. Austin Farrer elucidates a complex set of structures in which names can be broken down to give the qualities of the things so named, the tribes of Israel are used interchangeably with the houses of the zodiac, actual historical events are slid around in the interests of rhetoric, the referent of new metaphor is an older metaphor and the beginning of each new series is the culmination of some (perhaps half-forgotten) previous series. Were this not so, it would be difficult to account for the survival of ancient prophecy. Prophecy is not the mere foretelling of future events. For a prophecy to survive, it requires a timeless, meaningful structure into which the pressing features of succeeding eras can be fitted. Thus an old prophecy can be reused over and over again whilst acquiring kudos from its longevity. Otherwise, apocalyptic literature would have been discarded for its many instances of failed prediction. The old content can be written over with new meanings whilst the framework is retained and reused. An example of failed prophecy with which Revelation itself had to adjust was that most of Jewish apocalyptic had assumed that the Temple would be desecrated by the gentiles, using as its prototype for this the earlier experiences of just such desecration by Antiochus IV Epiphanes. When Titus raised the building and marched onward, the event failed to conform to its predicted type.

Many readers find the content of Revelation to be difficult, disturbing and repugnant. Seeing structure as a way into its message may be important. Otherwise, there may be no way in at all. What is the message? Or, as Christopher Rowland puts it more radically, "Can we read St. John any way we like?" He concludes that Christ himself is the restraint, even if it did not seem to restrain John the Divine. Tina Pippin offers a dual message: Death & Desire. "Entering into the fictional world of the Apocalypse involves facing fear and a whole range of feelings." Overcoming his own fears along exactly these lines was what had motivated Muggleton in the first place. He would certainly have endorsed the importance of death and desire. His notion of the second death is exactly that of John the Divine's, from where he may have obtained it. Desire is always the motivating force of reason and in opposition to faith. No one could have expressed the message of faith more grimly than John the Divine. Everyone in his vision offered repentance spurns their chance. One senses John saying, "See, I told you thus." To John it is putting in the hours of worship and praise to God that matter: repentance is mere subjective froth. For Muggleton, it is faith – the opposite of reason – that matters.

John Sweet feels the ethical problem misunderstood. It is wrong to see the destruction that occurs in Revelation as acts of God. Rather the destruction is a direct result of the sins of humankind rebounding upon their own heads. He cites ecological catastrophe as an example of this. Others see it differently, arguing that it was adherence to apocalyptic thinking which caused the complete destruction of Jewish society in second century Palestine. Maybe this is why the end of the world in Muggletonian beliefs differs from Revelation; the reprobate are left to stew in the world they have ruined whilst the elect ascend to a world where all things are created new.