Heresy, in simple terms, is defined as an opinion that is at variance with the accepted orthodoxy in any given area or belief system. And, certainly, this definition may work well in modern religious understanding, where some authority claiming to hold the keys to the truth defines the extent of accepted belief by figuratively drawing a circle in the sand. All belief and behavior inside the circle is orthodox—and, presumably, the closer to the center, the closer to the truth one is—while outside the circle lies a minefield of heresies. Truth exists and shelters the believer in a safe place away from all the dangers heresies encompass. At first glance, this figuration seems to hold some historical truth too. Through the centuries, heresies seemed to have been named and regulated by creeds, confessions, and law codes emanating from some established authority with claims to the truth. Patristic sources show us that Arian views that were explicitly anti-Trinitarian were deemed heretical. In the High Middle Ages, the papal reform movement made clerical celibacy a priority and thus named married priests heretics. And with the coming of the Protestant Reformation, the old orthodoxy of the Roman Catholic Church became the new heresy of Protestantism.

The problem with this simplistic view of heresy is that it does not stand up to historical scrutiny, as the twelve contributing authors to Heresy, Literature and Politics in Early Modern English Culture show. This interdisciplinary work analyzes the relationship of heresy to Protestantism in England in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and in many ways turns the common idea of heresy on its head to show that it was orthodoxy and the limits of toleration that were defined by heresies, not heresies that defined the limits of orthodoxy. The authors in this volume are not the first to express this idea. Even so, Heresy, Literature and Politics in Early Modern English Culture is important not just for its overall view of heresy but also for its depth and detail. It shows at once that contemporary views of heresy were associated with a variety of negative things, including communism, homosexuality, libertinism, disease, political intrigue, and sedition, not to mention a deliberate murder of one's soul. Yet, more important, there was a much more subtle theological view and use of heresy during these centuries.

The work is chronologically organized into three parts. The first covers the period of the Henrician Reform and its aftermath and includes chapters by David Loewenstein (“The Examinations of Anne Askew”), Carrie Euler (“Heresy and Orthodoxy during the Reign of Edward VI”) and Christopher Marsh (“Heresy and Gender in the Family of Love”). Collectively and individually, these essays demonstrate the extent of the attacks on “heretical” Evangelicalism as part of the process of authoritatively defining orthodoxy. The work opens with a study of the controversies surrounding sacramentarianism. Loewenstein demonstrates through the special case of Anne Askew, in which scriptural interpretation and gender converged, how distressed the authorities had become in trying to weed out heresy. The development of English Evangelical Protestantism with all its Continental influence is detailed by Euler as it developed its defenses against the “foreign” religions of Roman Catholicism and Anabaptism. Concluding this first section is the essay by Marsh, who explores the deliberate family constructions within the Family of Love, especially the roles of women and the extent to which the Familism was understood in a wider society.

The five chapters in the second section take the reader from the early seventeenth century through the English Revolution. These include essays by Peter Lake (“Puritanism, Familism and Heresy in Early Stuart England”), John Coffey (“Defining Heresy and Orthodoxy in the Puritan Revolution”), Ann Hughes (“Gangraena and Heresiological Traditions”), Nigel Smith (“Paul Best, John Biddle and Anti-Trinitarian Heresy”), and Thomas Corns (“The Heretical Dynamic of Winstanley's Early Prose”). Together, the essays provide a depth on heresy in the “Puritan Decades” not seen before and show the various “Puritanisms” to be in need of toleration as much as they were in need of conformity. This is especially true in the chapters by Lake and by Coffey. Hughes, by examining Thomas Edwards's Gangraena, offers a glimpse into the minds of the fearful as they considered the various heresies that surrounded them in the middle of the seventeenth century. Rounding out this section, the final two essays, by Smith and by Corns, illuminate the ideas of some of the seventeenth century's most notorious heretics: Best, Biddle, John Milton, and Gerrard Winstanley.

The work concludes with four essays that focus on the second half of the seventeenth century. Included here are essays by John Rogers (“Milton and the Heretical Priesthood of Christ”), J. A. I. Champion (“Thomas Hobbes, Thomas Barlow, and the Restoration Debate over Heresy”), John Marshall (“Defining and Redefining Heresy up to Locke's Letters Concerning Toleration”), and, finally, N. H. Keeble (“Orthodoxy and Heresy in the Baxterian Tradition”). As a whole, these four essays examine how concerns about heresy stimulated the debate for increased toleration. The essay by Rogers opens this final section by exploring the Socinian influences in Milton's Paradise Lost. Champion follows that by examining Hobbes's attempt to push the issues of toleration and anticlericalism simultaneously in his An Historical Narration Concerning Heresie. He also illuminates Thomas Barlow's contemporary responses to the work he called “wild and wicked” (237). The essay by Marshall, near the end of a work full of wonderfully written and expertly researched essays, is by far the best. It encompasses the theme of the work by analyzing John Locke's discussions of the definitions of heresy as they changed through the ages and his challenges to many of the more terrifying associations heresy had collected, such as communism, disease, and libertinism. To conclude, the chapter by Keeble follows a similar theme as it explores the ecumenical views of the late seventeenth-century Puritan Richard Baxter. In doing so, it rounds out an essential collection of essays on the changing face of heresy from the 1540s through the 1690s.