This week's Friday archival post is courtesy of another Michael's bookshelf: Michael Powell, Librarian at Chetham's. As he explains, Chetham's library has recently acquired a large printed book and archival collection, concerning Emanuel Swedenborg.
Emanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772) was a Swedish scientist, philosopher and theologian, referred to by some as a Christian mystic. The Revd. John Clowes of St. John's Deansgate, in Manchester, was his main translator into English. You can read more about Swedenborg here.
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| Christ Church, Salford |
Swedenborgianism in England is very much a Manchester or Lancashire phenomenon taking root here before the London Society was organised. Swedenborgianism adopted the structure, language, and mental framework of Methodism, but added a significant mystical element, which has links to Jacob Boehme and to William Law. [...]
The movement spread by preaching to local communities but chiefly by publishing. In 1782 Clowes established a Society of Gentlemen to publish his translations of Swedenborg. In 1801 this was renamed the Manchester Printing Society. The records of the Church, coupled with the books donated to the Library enable us to understand the remarkable printing history of a Church or Society which sought to proselytize mainly by publishing. Whilst most modern readers of Swedenborg would need to resort to hallucinogenics to make sense of it all, Clowes and his Society thought that simply putting the books before readers would result in conversion [...]
Clowes thought that he could preach Swedenborgianism from within the Church of England but the separatists won out and new churches were quickly founded. In Manchester, the separatists set up the celebrated Bible Christian Church in Salford: a curious Gnostic sect that was first society of Englishmen to espouse the cause of dietary reform. Clowes loved hunting and thought that it was God’s intention for man to rid the world of noxious animals. In contrast, William Cowherd, leader of the Salford Bible Christians, and the national High Priest of the New Church, set down his views in the hymn 'Little Lamb who ate thee? Dost thou know who ate thee?' (Although Blake, of course, was strongly attracted to Swedenborg's ideas, the title of this hymn is the one it ought to have been given. Having said that, it would have been quite fun to be sitting in the Bible Christian Church on a Sunday to hear the minister say, 'our next hymn will be no. 352 'Eaters of Flesh''. Of course, it wouldn’t have been any fun at all. Cowherd often used the pulpit to denounce members of his congregation as Satan. Those of us who subscribe to Lord Melbourne’s view of religion, that it should be cool and indifferent, would find the Bible Christians less than congenial.)
"Eaters of flesh!" Could you decry
Our food and sacred laws,
Did you behold the lambkin die,
And feel yourself the cause?
Lo! There it struggles! Hear it moan
As stretched beneath the knife:
Its eyes would melt a heart of stone
How meek it begs its life!
Had God, for man, its flesh design'd;
Matur'd by death, the brute
Lifeless to us had been consign'd,
As is the ripen'd fruit.
Hold, daring man! From murder stay!
God is the life of all.
You smite at God when flesh you slay: -
Can such a crime be small ?
It is possible to force-fit this to the tune of 'All things bright and beautiful', but a cash prize is on offer for the best tune to accompany this early ode to vegetarianism in Salford (anything by Morrissey is ineligible).
Vegetarianism was the distinguishing feature of the Bible Christians but not all members of the New Church subscribed to this. Francis Marcellus Hodson, a member of the Peter Street (Swedenborgian) church wrote the following satire of Cowherd’s hymn:
Eater of cabbage - "Kill and eat"
Are words once said to Peter.
For thee, around, the Flocks do bleat
Thou may'st partake - Herb-eater...
Odd that 'herb-eater' never really took off as a term of abuse.