‘out of their owne mouths’?
Conversion Narratives and English Radical Religious Practice
in the Seventeenth Century
Donatella Pallotti
University of Florence (donatella.pallotti@unifi.it)
Abstract
This article focuses on a form of writing, the conversion narrative, which was
familiar to mid-seventeenth-century godly readers. The purpose of the narrative,
which was a prerequisite for admission to the Church of Visible Saints, was to
give the congregation a spoken account of the experience of conversion and of the
workings of Grace in the life of the regenerate individual. Some of these reports were
transcribed, revised, and published by the ministers of the churches. By focusing
on the complex relationships between the ‘original’ experience, its expression, and
subsequent written transmission, the tension between individuality and conformity,
and the various forms of editorial intervention adopted by the ministers, this
study attempts to highlight the collaborative nature of the textual construction of
the conversion narrative and to address some crucial issues concerning both the
authenticity of the memory recorded and its ‘true’ author.
Keywords: Conversion Narratives, Editorial Methods, Revision, Spiritual Experience,
Transcription.
A man’s whole life is but a conversion.
James Fraser, Memoirs, 1738
... we might muster many Authors together
to beare testimony to this truth.
John Rogers, Ohel, or Beth-shemesh, 1653
... what you end up remembering isn’t always
the same as what you have witnessed.
Julian Barnes, The Sense of an Ending, 2011
1. Introduction
In mid-seventeenth-century England, a number of accounts of spiritual experi-
ences appeared almost simultaneously, collected and edited by the ministers
of some gathered churches. Taken together, these collections alone brought
more than a hundred first-person narratives to the public, most of them by
laypeople raised in a Protestant milieu. The narratives record a great variety
ISSN 2279-7149 (online)
2012 Firenze University Press
Journal of Early Modern Studies, vol. 1, n. 1 (2012), pp. 73-95
http://www.fupress.com/bsfm-jems
74 donatella pallotti
of spiritual experiences and describe the circumstances of the reception of
Christ’s call, showing the centrality of conversion in the believer’s life. Here
conversion should be understood as an intensification of faith and a spiritual
awakening within it.1
The purpose of the narratives, which qualified the individual for formal
inclusion in the Church of Visible Saints, was to give the congregation a
spoken, and convincing, account of the experience of conversion and the
subsequent workings of Grace in the life of the regenerate individual: ‘Every
one to be admitted’, the Independent minister John Rogers explained, ‘gives
out some experimental Evidences of the work of grace upon his soul (for the
Church to judge of ) whereby he (or she) is convinced that he is regenerate and
received by God’ (1653, 354).2 The account had to be corroborated with tes-
timonies by reliable witnesses as to the uprightness and blameless ‘carriage’
of the individual concerned.
For the ministers, who transcribed, revised, chose and published the nar-
ratives, the public testimony of a ‘genuine’ experience of conversion served to
validate the ‘true’ church, as ‘a free society or communion of visible Saints,
embodyed and knit together, by a voluntary consent’ (Bartlet 1647, C3r).3
In contrast to the ‘false and counterfeit’ Church of England, to the ‘supersti-
tious’ Church of Rome, and to all those churches formed on the parochial
principle, the gathered churches believed that it was ‘A Union of hearts rather
than a vicinity of Houses … to make up a Congregation’ (Cook 1647, 7).
By publicly declaring the presence of Christ’s redeeming power in the whole
body of the Church, the testimonies also functioned as powerful ‘reminder[s]
of the community’s basic values and goals’ (Rambo 1993, 137).
The public delivery of one’s conversion experience also responded to an
evangelical concern: by ‘power[ing] out their Experiences, and tell[ing] the
means, and showi[ng] the effects of their Call’ (Rogers 1653, 361), the Saints
helped initiate others into a conversion experience. ‘In their Experiences’, John
Rogers says, ‘you shall heare how they are changed’ (362), ‘By their Experiences
you will learne how various God is in his wayes and workings’ (366). Further-
more, ‘Experiences declared do oblige others, and allure them exceedingly to
relye upon God, and to beleeve in him’ (367); they also help develop humility
and tolerance in the congregation by teaching ‘to suspend … censures’, and
by forbearing ‘prejudicate opinions, or harsh judgement of such as suspire …
and aspire under lamentable soule-travel, and heart-pangs’ (364). All in all,
‘by observing the Saints in their Experience’, a person can ‘learn the way to
live in Christ’ (366).4 A conversion narrative generates further conversions.
The aims of the exposition of the story of one’s conversion were thus
manifold: the public delivery could be effectual in instructing, exhorting,
comforting, teaching and edifying the believers who, by sharing their expe-
riences, helped one another construct their (spiritual) identity as part of a
close-knit community.5
75‘out of their owne mouths’?
In order to prove their godliness and the authenticity of their conversion,
not only did believers have to tell the story of their conversion but they also
had to submit themselves to the ‘public’ gaze. Through the converts’ words
as well as self-display, by their speaking and appearing, the assembly could
ear-witness and eye-witness God’s ‘worke on the soule’ and thus ‘know (so far
as may be judged by the effects) who are the Elect of God’ (358).6
Seen in terms of speech events, rather than written texts, conversion nar-
ratives share with other ‘cultural performances’ a set of characteristic features.
First of all, such events tend to be scheduled, set up and prepared in advance;
they are temporally and spatially bound, that is they are enacted in a space (and
time) that are symbolically marked off; they are also ‘coordinated public occa-
sions, open to view by an audience and to collective participation’ (Bauman
1989, 264). In sum, they are events that are ‘situated, enacted, and rendered
meaningful within socially defined situational contexts’ (264):7 the sense of
the conversion narrative and the forms, manners and concrete circumstances
of its delivery are inseparable.8
In 1653 two substantial collections of experiences were published.9 Spirituall
Experiences of Sundry Beleevers (most likely edited by the London Independent
Henry Walker, and prefaced by the Baptist/Fifth Monarchist Vavasor Powell)
contained sixty-one accounts ‘wherein is wonderfully declared Gods’ severall
workings in the various conditions of his chosen ones’ (taken from the title page).
In the same year, the independent John Rogers published Ohel or Beth-shemesh: A
Tabernacle for the Sun; it included thirty-eight testimonies from the members of his
Dublin congregation.10 Another small collection was published the following year
(1654b) by the Independent Samuel Petto in Roses from Sharon or Sweet Experi-
ences Gathered up by some precious hearts, whilst they followed on to know the Lord.11
2.‘Experience’: Definitions
The emphasis on ‘experience’ is a characteristic of seventeenth-century
England; the word itself appears in the title of Walker’s and Petto’s collections
and frequently occurs in the adjectival form ‘experimental’ in all three collec-
tions. What the Puritans meant by ‘experience’ is well illustrated by Vavasor
Powell in the epistle ‘To the sober and spirituall Readers’ which opens Walker’s
collection. ‘[A]mongst the various wayes of Gods teaching’, says Powell,
Experience is one of the chiefest; for that is the inward sense and feeling, of what is
outwardly read and heard; and the spirituall and powerfull enjoyment of what is be-
lieved. Experience is a Copy written by the Spirit of God upon the hearts of beleevers.
It is one of Faiths handmaids, and attendants, and Hopes usher. (1653, A2r-A2v)
Jane Turner, who published a ‘spiritual autobiography’ in 1654, defines the
‘true Christian experience’ as ‘truth brought home to the heart with life and
76 donatella pallotti
power’ (1653, 202), and Samuel Petto describes it as ‘entercourse and com-
munion’ between Christ and His people (1654b, O4r).
As these definitions highlight, the term ‘experience’ referred to something
personal, to inner religiosity, a source of knowledge by which an individual is
consciously affected; they also postulate, especially Powell’s, that the doctrine
‘read and heard’ should be intimately ‘felt’ and emotionally ‘lived’, and then
made known through narrative and testimony. ‘Now to a poor soule’, John
Rogers stated, ‘all such things as are in the soule, are made known by experi-
ences; experiences, we say, proves principles’ (1653, 355).
The emphasis on oral discourse, on verbal expression and public com-
munication of the ‘experience’, is one of the reasons why so many reports have
faded away after being spoken. Those preserved in the collections mentioned
were transcribed, abridged, revised, chosen and published by the ministers of
the gathered churches expressly for the benefit of ‘many precious Christians’
outside and inside the congregation, for, as Vavasor Powell puts it, in the col-
lection, the readers ‘maysee not only [their] owne hearts, but many hearts,
and heart-knowledge’ (1653, A3).
3. Collections of Experiences
Though the account of experiences is described by Rogers as a ‘most satisfactory
testimony; that comes from within’ (1653, 290), the conversion narratives do
not only voice the intimate experience of the ‘conversion of the heart’ (as op-
posed to ‘formal’ conversion) but they are also examples of a highly structured
and codified discourse by which the converts record their progress towards
‘sainthood’. Although these narratives vary in terms of local experience and
theology (the three collections are shaped by the teaching and discipline of the
minister who transcribed them; their appearance in print is therefore context
specific), their basic structure shows an observable continuity with the applied
theology of Perkins and other Elizabethan Puritans, who had provided a guide
to help unregenerate individuals discover their prospects of salvation.12 With
little variation, the narratives follow a pattern – the so called ‘morphology of
conversion’ – which detailed stages of sin, false confidence, doubt, conviction,
faith, temptation and assurance, a pattern that gave a structure and chronology,
therefore an interpretation, to a range of events and experiences; ‘adherence
to these conventions confirmed and valorised the godliness of the author’
(Hinds 1995, 12). In order to be accepted as ‘a genuine guarantee of salva-
tion’, the experience ‘would have to fall within a specific pattern: otherwise
the conversion might be a false one, and the sinner caught in the hypocrisy of
a false confidence in their salvation’ (Hobby 1988, 66). Puritan divines such
as Perkins, Culverwell, Hildersam, Ames endeavoured to describe in detail
the processes through which
77‘out of their owne mouths’?
God’s free grace operates in the salvation of men. … They wished to trace the natural
history of conversion in order to help men discover their prospects of salvation; and
the result of their studies was to establish a morphology of conversion, in which each
stage could be distinguished from the next, so that a man could check his eternal
condition by a set of temporal and recognizable signs. (Morgan 1963, 66)
The narrative is thus constructed in relation to the ‘collective’ assumptions,
genre conventions and cultural ideologies shared by the religious community
the convert seeks affiliation to. If converts do not reveal what God has done
for them, and/or if they do not do it according to the language and conven-
tions of the church they wish to join, they cannot be recognized as ‘new
creatures’ and thus cannot be counted among the elect in the Visible Church.
In this sense, if not actualized in an act of speech, if not sealed with a public
demonstration of the person’s transformation and her/his new religious and
social commitments, conversion remains ‘ineffective’.13 Thus the conversion
experience is inseparable from the expression of the experience itself (see
Payne 1998, 1-12).14
In a sense, the distance between the narrative and the expectations of the
community has to be programmatically negligible: the ‘truthfulness’ and value
of the spiritual experience and of the person who lived it are gauged by the
degree of observance to a recognized, and sanctioned, model. The ‘new birth’
is indeed an experience of the heart, deeply personal and intimate, but it is
also a process that is stimulated, nourished and directed by the assumptions
and expectations of the religious community.
A fundamental problem concerns the conflict between the personal meaning,
the individual living experience and the social and discursive conventions that
are supposed to convey them; it regards how an experience, that was generally
considered beyond expression, could be ‘converted’ into language and commu-
nicated to others, who, in turn, had to sanction it. The pressures to shape one’s
own life according to a dominant paradigm were likely to arouse anxious feelings
in converts. In this respect, the following, oft-quoted remark by Richard Baxter is
particularly illuminating: ‘I could not’ – says Baxter – ‘distinctly trace the Workings
of the Spirit upon my heart in that method which … Divines describe’ (1696, 6);
but then he ‘at last’ understands ‘that God breaketh not all Mens hearts alike’ (7).
The conversion narrative is the result of both a linguistic transformation
and biographical reconstruction, processes that are never innocent from an
ideological and psychological point of view. It is a retrospective account of what
the convert thinks or wants others to think she or he has experienced; in this
sense, the narrative explains and justifies the radical change that has affected
the life of the individual and legitimizes the conversion; it asserts the difference
of identity between a past, sinful ‘I’ and a present, godly ‘I’. Not only is the
narrative an interpretation and conceptualization of a significant experience
of change and a justification for ‘turning away from’ past allegiances, but it is
78 donatella pallotti
also a self-interpretation in that the narrator describes how s/he became – out
of what s/he was – what s/he presently is (see Starobinski 1980, 79).
Narrators shape their material; knowingly or unknowingly, they choose
what to tell, they suppress and repress a great deal. What is recollected and told
is not only filtered by affective factors, both emotional and psychological, but
crucially, by a frame of reference and an axiology that are in tune with the ethos
and goals of the religious community the regenerate individual has joined or
wants to join. The cultural, social and religious expectations of the group shape
to a great degree one’s conversion story and biographical reconstruction; as
Rambo puts it, ‘learning to give one’s testimony of conversion is often an integral
part of the conversion process itself ’ (1993, 137, see also 118-121, 137-138).
In this context, it is important to recognize the role played by the editors
of the collections in their reconstruction, revision and selection of the spoken
accounts, the input they had, the constraints they imposed upon them, as
well as the degree of (more or less conscious) self-censorship exercised. Such
interference raises crucial issues concerning both the ‘authenticity’ of the
memory recorded, and its ‘true’ author.
4. Issues of Authorship
As I have tried to show, the narratives of spiritual experiences contained in the
1653 and 1654 collections are highly ‘mediated’ texts, and they are ‘mediated’
at different levels.
The conversion story had to attest to the power of God’s work, ‘to bear
witnesse’, as Rogers maintained, ‘to the world of the workings of Gods Spirit’
(1653, 417). This claim immediately raises a major critical problem. It concerns
the relationship between the original event, to which we do not have access,
and the narrative that describes it, which is an available and observable piece
of evidence. It involves the issue of representation in discourse, that is, how we
translate into language, and describe to others, an experience such as conver-
sion, that is ultimately mystical and ineffable, ‘available only subjectively to the
convert and beyond the power of language to objectify’ (Payne 1998, 61).15
In A Legacy for Saints, the Fifth Monarchist prophetess Anna Trapnel
pauses on the incommunicability of the experience of conversion, which she
defines ‘unexpressible’:
oh how transcendently glorious is the true sealing of the Spirit! sure no tongue is
able to speak it out, the pen of the readiest writer cannot write this, it may give some
hints of this seal, but for depth, length, and breadth, who can give a full description
or relation of it, it is a thing impossible to be published? (1654, 11)
The question of how to express such an experience and how to communi-
cate it in such a way that others might be convinced of its ‘authenticity’ was
79‘out of their owne mouths’?
momentous for converts, since that was the key opening the door of the
community of Visible Saints; an issue that Puritan divines and ministers were
well aware of. ‘As to that impression which the Holy Ghost leaves upon the
heart of a man’, the Independent minister Thomas Goodwin remarks, ‘that
man can never make the like impression on another; he may describe it to
you, but he cannot convey the same image and impression upon the heart of
any man else’ (1862, 297).
The ‘impression upon the heart’ is the work of the Spirit of God, a work
that Goodwin himself describes in terms of writing. Indeed, the Holy Spirit
is an author that ‘writes first all graces in us, and then teaches us to read his
handwriting’ (1636, 116). In order to make known to the ‘world’ ‘the workings
of Gods Spirit’, and become a member of the Visible Church, the individual
believer has to appropriate the socially sanctioned discourse (of conversion)
that enables her/him to give a name to what has possessed no prior cultural
reality. The language of the larger ‘interpretive community’ (Stanley Fish’s
expression) validates the individual experience and, in a sense, actually creates
it. Thus, the ordinary believer becomes the focus of (public) attention not
only as the teller and protagonist of her/his own story, but also as its ‘author’:
‘telling a story’, Roger Schank observed, ‘isn’t rehearsal, it is creation’ (1995,
115). In order to be remembered, an experience must be told:
We need to tell someone else a story that describes our experience because the process
of creating the story also creates the memory structure that will contain the gist of
the story for the rest of our lives. Talking is remembering. (115)
Moreover, as Schank argues, listening to other people’s stories shapes the
memories we have of our experiences.16
The very action of telling her/his own story of conversion establishes, in
a sense, a uniqueness of self, a self that is placed in the spotlight as ‘author’,
a self who claims authority over her/his discourse on the basis of her/his own
experience. This position, however, strongly collides with the experience of
conversion itself, an experience that involves self-denial, even self-dissolution,
in order to take place.17
The moment of the original ‘performance’, when the believer appears
before the whole assembly to give her/his account, is inaccessible to us, its
participatory and empathetic aspects being irremediably lost. All we have is
but a reconstructed account of what was said, whose authorship appears prob-
lematic and ‘dispersed’ among several people.
Indeed, the ministers of the gathered churches who attended to the
publication of the collections of the experiences, ‘converted’ the oral stories
to written accounts, transcribed and framed them, and in so doing, not only
transposed the ‘real’ words from one (anterior) context to another, but, more
importantly, turned them into ‘new’ texts. The criteria they followed are only
80 donatella pallotti
sometimes, and partially, made explicit. On the contrary, what is apparent
is that (presumably) the ministers were guided by intentions, and pursued
goals, sensibly different from those of the believers who first gave the oral
accounts. One may assume, for instance, that the compilers – who were also
in charge of their respective congregations – endeavoured to portray the
spiritual and social cohesion of their own church, a picture that could be
conveyed by standardizing and homogenizing the texts chosen. The individual
accounts were assembled and juxtaposed within a larger unity, the ‘book’ of
experiences, which gave them an overall organization and provided a frame
of interpretation. Put together, the experiences produce a cumulative effect
and display ‘the variety of [God’s] dispensations in grace’. Furthermore, they
show the regenerate nature of the true Church of Christ, as a ‘fellowship of
Saints’, formed by individual ‘competent Members’, ‘gathered into one body’
(Rogers 1653, 417, 59, 61, 70).
An initial important consequence of the editors’ intervention is that
we cannot have a complete picture of the phenomenon of conversion, since
the stories included in the collections always have a ‘happy ending’: they all
involve the assurance of salvation, and imply sanctification. However, it is by
virtue of their ‘happy ending’ that the narratives can reveal the ‘dark side’ of
the converts’ soul and personality: profane thoughts, disorderly and ungodly
behaviour, conflictual relationships, negative feelings, (self-)destructive im-
pulses, and all kinds of transgressions are taken up and become ‘acceptable’
subjects of the narratives, precisely because they herald renunciation and
submission. Indeed, their disclosure, within the authorized discourse of the
public testimony, signals the fact that they have been dominated and have
already become part of the past (see Pallotti 2007, 33-54, 49, 54).
The collections also appear to establish, and belong to, an intertextual and
interdiscursive context, not only because they rely on the framework of doc-
trine, but also because they make details of experience public and encourage an
intense exchange amongst like-minded believers, both as speakers and hearers,
and writers and readers.18 The presentation in print of the ‘fruits of experience’
was – as Watkins remarks – ‘an extension … of the obligation which all Puritans
accepted to admonish and exhort one another up in the faith’ (1972, 234).
In a passage reflecting on the aims of his collection, Rogers reveals that his
endeavour has been to ‘incite others to doe thus, viz. to gather out the flowers
of their garden, to present them to the Saints in other places’ (1653, 417), that
is, to compile similar works, shaping them on his own collection. Rogers offers
his collection as a model for other ministers to follow, one that allows them to
overcome the tension between individuality and conformity in the narratives,
So that the variety of the flowers, and of the colors, and of the natures, and of the
formalities of them, gathered together into one, give a glorious lustre, and like the Rain-
bow of many colors, signifie fair weather for Ireland. (417)
81‘out of their owne mouths’?
This move draws attention to Rogers’s construction of the book and authorial
role, eventually helping increase his own stature as a minister and enhancing
the reputation of the Dublin congregation that he guides so authoritatively.
In the epistle to the reader in the second, enlarged, edition of Spirituall
Experiences, Vavasor Powell refers to earlier publications, saying, ‘What hath
been Printed of this nature, hath both been acceptable and profitable, to many
precious Christians’ (1653, A3). While preparing his own collection, John
Rogers says that he had the chance to see ‘a little peace, tituled, Spiritual ex-
periences of Sundry Beleevers, recommended by Mr. Powel’. He also wishes that
every Church appoint the Pastor, or some others to take up all the experiences which
the members declare, and to bring the best & choicest of them into publique light, Oh
how beautifull would they be abroad! … it is a burning shame they should lye buried
alive, and not to be brought into the light, which are given in to all the Churches in
this age, that are of excellency and use. (1653, 355, 450)19
‘Members declare’, ‘the Pastor, or some others’ ‘take up ... the experiences’.
Two different roles are highlighted here: the first, attributed to the converts,
is limited to exposition, the second, that of ‘others’, involves ‘acquisition’,
selection and transmission. What is postulated is a re-creative practice on the
part of ‘the pastor or some others’, aimed at the preservation and diffusion of
what otherwise would ‘lye buried’, a practice that ultimately validates what has
been previously ‘declared’. ‘Have them upon record’, exhorts Samuel Petto,
talking about experiences (1654a, 182).
The compiler’s role, presenting the fruits of experiences, appears to be as
prominent as that of the subject who has ‘actually’ lived and ‘declared’ them.
The texts appear thus to be the work of multiple participants and involve
a collaborative discourse; they are the product of a community acting on
shared beliefs.
The collections as a whole contain at least two different points of view:
that of the narrator of each story, the convert, that is in turn shaped by the
cultural as well as discursive expectations of the community, and that of
the compiler of the book, who ‘re-presents’ the stories of conversion, using
the direct speech form. The impression created is that the reporter exercises
minimal control over the propositional content and the words used to utter
that content: direct forms, linguists remind us, seem to evoke the original
voice and help produce the effects of immediacy (see, among others, Short,
Semino and Wynne 2002, 325-355). Though the effect of the direct speech
form is that the account we read seems to be a word-by-word reproduction
of the original with no apparent, external intrusion, reporters do intervene,
and their interference cannot be underestimated. All transcription, it is often
noted, ‘involves subjective interpretation’ (Culpeper and Kytö 2010, 79); by
no means can we assume verbatim faithfulness to the original speech, even
in the case of direct speech form.20
82 donatella pallotti
The most obvious instance of the compilers’ mediation is shown by the
presence of a heading preceding each account; the heading introduces a speaker
in the third person, thus ‘evoking’ the voice of another speaker reporting the
first person’s discourse. A double process of enunciation is therefore linguisti-
cally signalled and made explicit through the relationship narratives establish
between their headings and the text proper.
The transition from the third person of the heading to the first person
of the text leads the readership from the public domain to a more private
sphere. The print context of the testimonies, therefore, as Coolahan remarks,
‘presents them simultaneously as individual narratives [they are written in the
first person] and community texts’ (2010, 235).
5. Shaping ‘Experience’: the Editorial Work
While introducing ‘Examples of Experiences’, John Rogers informs readers
that he ‘constructed’ the testimonies ‘as well as I can collect them out of the
Notes which I took of [the converts] from their own mouths, when they were
admitted into the Church’ (1653, 391).21 Then he makes clear that he selected
the testimonies in order to ‘present, as a sweet posie of some of the chiefest-
flowers that I have met with this spring-time in the Garden of the Lord!’ (391),
therefore ‘purposely omit[ing] many experiences of inferior glory, and lower
appearance’ (450). Though Rogers claims that he has ‘dealt faithfully with all,
as I finde them in my Notes, as near as I can to a tittle’, taken out of their owne
mouths’ (417), he, in fact, reveals how he interfered with the converts’ texts:
I shall premise this, for the godly Readers sake, that I must contract much their experi-
ences as they were taken, least they be too voluminous: And although in the choicest
and most extraordinary ones, I shall gather the stalk longer, least I hurt the beauty and
hide the excellency of those flowers; yet without hurt to the rest, in those which are
ordinary, I shall be very short, … I shall gather out the flowers only, and give you the
sum of what they said, and so tie them up together for a conclusion of the whole mat-
ter.… a very great many more I might adde to them, … many more do lie prepared
by me. (392)22
By signalling a division between ‘ordinary’ and ‘extraordinary’ experiences,
Rogers highlights a distinctive feature of his ministry; it relates to the ways
in which the workings of the Spirit can be known by converts. This could be
done in an ordinary way, through preaching, praying, reading, writing, by the
transforming effects of Grace on ‘judgement, will, and affections’; and in an
extraordinary way, by trances, ‘dreams, and visions, and voices’ (354).
Not only did Rogers ‘contract much’, summarize, extract passages from
the testimonies and organize them in a text of his own devising, but he also
annotated them so that they would appear in print with directions in the
margins, showing the reader particular points she/he should take note of, as
83‘out of their owne mouths’?
well as ‘When? where? and how?’ the conversion took place and ‘the effects’
it produced (392). In order to illustrate how annotation is part of the design
of Rogers’s text, I reproduce here Rebecca Rich’s testimony (413).
30. Experience of Rebecca Rich.
I was wont (by Gods providence) to hear Mr. Cradock by
whose Ministry the Lord wrought much upon me, and
I thought I was the person that he particularly spoke to;
and I lay long afflicted under the sense of my naturall condi-
tion, and under the burthen of a wounded spirit, and after that
whilest I lived nigh London, I lived much upon forme, till
God was pleased to come in by his Spirit, and then all was
nothing; but Christ was all, and the best of all, and ever
since I have received Christ, I have loved his ways, and desired
the society of his society. Was much comforted and confirmed
even last night in Michaels publique place, by that Or-
dinance of prophecying one by one, which the Church kept so
sweetly, and I was very much convinced of your walking together
in love and unity of spirit.
Captain Rich’s
Wife.
Called,
1. When,
where.
2. How.
Lived much
on formes.
3. Effects.
Confirmed by
that ordinance
of prophecying
Rebecca Rich’s testimony is a very short, and, presumably, summarized ac-
count. Here little space is given to the narrator’s inner life. However, the
testimony fulfils the requisites for conversion illustrated by Rogers himself
and displayed in the marginal notes: ‘When? where? and how? with the ef-
fects’ (392). The marginal notes clearly point out the transition from one
stage of spiritual progress to another, (externally) supplying a soteriological
scheme, providing an interpretative framework through which the account
should be read (and given), and the convert’s life shaped. The typographical
arrangement displays the dialogic structure of the text; it highlights the ongo-
ing conversation between the main-block text, Rebecca Rich’s experience, and
the margin, Rogers’s glosses, which draw the readers’ attention to the points
he thinks worth considering. The persistent repetition, with little variation,
of the same items appears to be an instructional strategy on Rogers’s part, a
way of constantly reminding his audience about the essentials of a ‘true’, and
convincing, conversion.
In the collection, marginal notes also function as annotations providing
references, particularly to Scripture, in this function, shoring up the texts of the
testimonies with Biblical authority. By and large, marginalia are used to control
the reading process, becoming as William Slights suggests, an exercise in ‘reader
management’ that led the reader to enter the text ‘through what the marginalist,
… deemed appropriate doorways’ (1989, 683, 697-98). Drawing attention to
the interpretative nature of editorial apparatuses, Evelyn Tribble argues that the
margins of texts and the ‘text proper’ are in ‘shifting relationships of authority’:
84 donatella pallotti
the margin might affirm, summarize, underwrite the main text block and thus tend
to stabilize meaning, but it might equally assume a contestatory or parodic relation
to the text by which it stood. Nor is the margin consistently the site of the secondary,
for the margins of texts were often central in their importance. (1993, 6)
Rebecca Rich’s account casts some light on Rogers’s general editorial method,
a method that seems to reinforce, as Watkins observes, ‘the tendency for the
accounts to display a standard scheme of interpretation’ (1972, 41). All the
testimonies in Rogers’s collection present a similar structure, containing the
circumstances of conversion and its effects on the convert’s life and attitudes
and displaying the split self characteristic of ‘autobiographical’ writings; nearly
all end with her/his determination to hold back from sin and serve God (see
also Watkins 1972, 40-41). Rogers’s own conversion narrative follows the
same trajectory, his life story being edited and shaped in an analogous way.
In a self-reflective passage that opens the account, he writes:
To give a formall account from year to year of my life, would make me too tedious, to
you and my self; and I fear somewhat offensive to such as are to follow, though I may
safely say in every year since I can remember, I have been inriched with so many and
such remarkable experiences; … to tell you some few for the present, I shall cite some
of the most remarkable passages which (to my present remembrance) I have met with
in former years to this day … . (1653, 419)
Thus Rogers prunes his own story, and chooses to report only what he consid-
ers ‘the most remarkable’ pieces of information. What is ‘tedious’ here is, as
Coolanhan observes, ‘the comprehensive, detailed life; what is important is
the trajectory towards conversion and assurance’ (2010, 236).
The testimonies are numbered progressively and, as mentioned above,
always preceded by a heading where the believer’s name and, sometimes,
the place where the account was first given, are spelled out. At times, and in
the case of male converts, Rogers supplies information about the profession
exercised, or the military rank held by the speaker. When the ‘author’ of the
testimony is a woman, the compiler sometimes illuminates his readership about
her ties of kinship. In the marginal notes, he glosses of Elizabeth Chambers,
for instance, ‘Her husband a Captain’ (1653, 406); of Rebecca Rich, that she
is ‘Captain Rich’s wife’ (413).23 According to Coolahan, these identifications
‘locate the Cromwellian context for these texts’ (2010, 235). They also lend
authenticity and originality to the conformist pattern of the regenerate life.
This editorial practice enables the immediate identification of the
speaker of the narrative, to whom, at least apparently, the responsibility for
the discourse is attributed. At the same time, it makes explicit the editor’s
(intentional) choice of presenting information as a direct speech report. What
emerges is that Rogers’s reporting method in ‘his’ conversion narratives appears
to foreground both the report and the attribution.24
85‘out of their owne mouths’?
Again, some headings exhibit comments revealing how Rogers dealt with
particular accounts. In the case of Elizabeth Avery, for instance, he offers his
readers ‘A fuller Testimony’ (1653, 402). The narrative of Adrian Strong, on
the contrary, is accompanied by a caption reading: ‘In short thus:’ (9),25 which
highlights Rogers’s editorial intervention. Another heading casts doubt on the
reliability of Rogers himself as a ‘faithful’ reporter; the text reads: ‘Experience
of Henry Johnson, which is taken imperfectly, and very short’ (408).
More revealing are those annotations where the minister exhibits his
church connections by mentioning his ‘spiritual associations’, or lends author-
ity to himself by drawing attention to his role as an instrument of God’s will.
Illuminating in this respect are the marginal notes next to Elizabeth Avery’s
and Elizabeth Chambers’s accounts.
In the case of Elizabeth Avery, Rogers writes that ‘Mr. Parker was her
father, that able Divine that writ De Eccles. Polit. so largely; but she married
Master Avery a Commissary in Ireland’ (403). Avery’s father, Robert Parker
(c.1564-1614), was an important minister and preacher who, because of his
nonconformist convictions, was suspended from his ministry and died in exile
in the Netherlands. De Politeia Ecclesiastica Christi et Hierarchica Opposita,
libritres (1616), published posthumously in Frankfurt, was Parker’s most
controversial work. Written in Latin, it was held in high regard by congre-
gationalists, especially in New England; there, Parker was acclaimed father
of the faith (see Sprunger 2004). In a significant way, by mentioning Parker,
an authoritative writer, and his authoritative work, Rogers makes explicit his
credentials as well as the religious and confessional context against which he
knowingly endeavours to shape himself and his congregation.
Not only was Elizabeth Avery the daughter of such a revered ‘Divine’,
but, more revealingly, she was herself a radical writer who, in 1647, had pub-
lished three prophetic letters, under the title of Scripture-Prophecies Opened,
which, for their radical and millenarian content, brought an accusation of
heresy against her. In her book, Avery casts herself in the role of prophet and
describes her writings as endued with a charismatic message which she must
communicate on God’s behalf: ‘I finde the immediate acting of the Spirit in
giving in, and … in carrying me forth to communicate it to others’ (1647, A3).
In order to defuse the suspicion of heresy, she posits herself as a mere instru-
ment of God, a lack of agency that is reinforced by strategic conformity to the
discourse of female inadequacy and by the traditional argument of negative
capability, whereby God would choose an apparently inappropriate instrument
to fulfil His designs. In A Copy of a Letter … to his Sister, Mrs. Elizabeth Avery
(1650), her brother Thomas, minister of Newbury, Massachusetts, one of the
few ministers in New England to hold Presbyterian views, strongly attacked
her both on ‘theological and patriarchal grounds’ (Coolanhan 2010, 234).26
In her lengthy spiritual testimony, contained in Rogers’s collection, Avery
significantly recalls her activity as a ‘writer’, when she ‘writ down what God
86 donatella pallotti
had done for me, and writ down about to my friends’ (Rogers 1653, 406);
some of these letters constituted Avery’s own tract, Scripture-Prophecies Opened,
published before her reaching Ireland with her husband, ‘Master Avery a
Commissary’ in that country (Baston 2004).
The biographical note next to Elizabeth Avery’s account, which informs
the reader about Elizabeth’s family background and marital status, enables
Rogers to advert to his confessional stand, and to provide a context for ‘other
women’s testimonies’ (Coolahan 2010, 234).27
While the annotation accompanying Avery’s account attests Rogers’s
church connections, the gloss next to Chambers’s text seems to represent an
act of self-endorsement on his part. The note reads:
Her Husband a Captain. This Gentlewoman declared to several Church-Members,
that before the Author came over, she had in a dream one night of her troubles, a
vision of him so plainly, that after he was in Dublin, the first Serm. he preached, she
told her friends this was the man that God had declared to her in a vision, should
comfort her soul. (Rogers 1653, 406)
As the note claims, the arrival of Rogers in Ireland was ‘extraordinarily’ an-
nounced: it was revealed by divine inspiration. In her account, Chambers
herself recollects that she ‘was without assurance, and had no full and clear
satisfaction all this while; until the Lord, who heareth prayers, sent over Mr.
Rogers from the Councel of State to us’ (407). Rogers fulfils the prophecy: he
is an instrument sent by God to perform His divine will in the congregation.
The inclusion of the marginal note does not only represent a (self )-
celebratory gesture on Rogers’s part, but could also be seen as a move aimed
to prevent possible criticism against his church policy and doctrine. Signifi-
cantly, in the note, Rogers does not identify himself distinctively by name or
title, but describes himself as ‘the Author’, the writer of ‘this’ book, who, by
invoking a Saint’s ‘experience’, claims authority over his own discourse and
practice, an authority that ultimately derives from God. Being such an author,
the implication is, his work must have the divine hallmark stamped on it.
Interestingly, in the collection, Elizabeth Chambers’s testimony immediately
follows Elizabeth Avery’s, this sequence perhaps not being fortuitous. The notes
next to the two testimonies exhibit two different standards of ‘truth’ that seem
somehow reconcilable and to parallel the two ways of attaining Grace, ‘ordinar-
ily’ and ‘extraordinarily’, that Rogers has conceived. In Avery’s case, he offers
biographical and bibliographical information that adds documentary objectivity
to the testimony and its ‘author’. The insertion of these factual details functions
as an authenticating procedure that enables Rogers to show the sound doctrinal
basis on which his church rests and from which it receives legitimation.
In the note next to Chambers’s testimony, on the contrary, he gives
more space to ‘anecdotal’ information that documents a ‘truth’ subjectively
87‘out of their owne mouths’?
experienced, a ‘truth’ that ultimately descends from God. This ‘truth’ con-
cerns Rogers himself whose pastoral role and authority are thus shown to be
sanctioned by divine power: he is the recognized minister of a vibrant and
upright community of Visible Saints.
Though the explicit aim of ministers of the gathered churches was to bring
‘into publicke view’ the testimonies, in order to ‘bear witnesse to the world of
the workings of Gods Spirit’ (417), the editorial approach they adopted does
not necessarily imply conformity. On the contrary, each minister ‘shapes’ his
collection according to his own teaching and discipline, elements that also
influence the converts’ delivery.
In order to give a glimpse of a different way of conceiving a ‘book’ of
spiritual testimonies, I would like to expand the discussion and consider the
other substantial collection of experiences published in 1653: Spirituall Experi-
ences of Sundry Beleevers, probably edited by Henry Walker, an Independent
minister who preached at the church of Martins Vintry in London.28
While Rogers’s collection is incorporated into, and therefore is only
a part of, a voluminous tract vindicating its author’s personal perspective
on Independency, Walker’s testimonies constitute the body of the book, its
content. In the second, enlarged edition, they are divided into two parts and
introduced by a commendatory ‘Epistle’ addressed ‘To the sober and spirituall
Readers of this Booke’ by Vavasor Powell. The book also contains a short treatise
on ‘The Practise of the Gathered Churches’, which is added, with its own title
page, at the end of it.
The original conversion accounts are said to have been, as the title
page reads, ‘Held forth … at severall solemne meetings, and Conferences to
that end’, a phrase that highlights the public context in which the original
testimonies took place. They were delivered before an audience purposely
gathered to listen to them and evaluate the effectiveness of the convert’s
accomplishment.
The written narratives are all constructed according to a design that
comprises three major elements. As Watkins describes them, they ‘embody’:
a brief account of the circumstances of conversion, the quotation of some texts that
helped to bring peace to the troubled soul, and the enumeration of signs by which
the believer was assured of his state of grace. (1972, 41)
At the end of each narrative, the signs of regeneration are ‘listed by numbers’
and ‘correspond to those given in contemporary treatises’ (41). By and large,
the narratives tend to be longer than those contained in Rogers’s Ohel, thus
giving a little more space to the converts’ personal life. The‘extraordinary’
phenomena that figure so prominently in Rogers’s collection are here toned
down, whereas selected Biblical passages, and the same ones, recur constantly,
a characteristic that constitutes a cohesive tie, highlighting a common per-
88 donatella pallotti
spective in the congregation.29 Moreover, the accounts are all introduced by a
heading, reading ‘Experiences of ’, followed by the speaker’s initials only, which
are also repeated at the end of each account. No marginal notes are present
and therefore no annotations provide perspectives on the texts, their dialogic
structure disappearing from view. In contrast to Rogers, who dwells, albeit
briefly, on his editorial method, Walker devotes no space to comments on his
own practice, leaving unexpressed the criteria adopted for the construction
of his ‘book’. Yet, he is far from being ‘absent’.
Significantly, at the beginning of the volume, Walker provides “A Table
of the Conversions of the severall Persons expressed in this Booke’, where he
gives a synopsis of each testimony, focusing attention on those aspects that,
from his perspective, appear more pregnant. Generally speaking, the editor
singles out events and/or persons that have been the catalysts of the process
of regeneration, thus providing a guide for readers on how to interpret the
texts published. The table also offers information about the believers’ gender:
through the use of third person pronouns and their derivatives, we are able
to identify whether the original author is a man or woman. In order to show
how the ‘Table of the Conversions’ is constructed, I quote here its first page:
T.A. Converted after three yeares terrour upon his Conscience, and then rowling
himselfe on Christ …
T.P. The terrours of Hell laid hold on him, for offering wrong against the people of
God, that he cryed out he was damned many yeares …
M.W. By a Sermon at Liverpooll and after great afflictions, with a piece of a Bible in
a barne …
I.I. By waiting upon the ordinances …
E.C. After seven yeares temptation to kill her selfe, for neglecting to come to the
ordinances, she threw her selfe upon Christ …
D.M. By a young infant, when she went to a Pond to drown her self …
While the ‘Table of the Conversions’ introduces the actors of the testimonies
in the third person, the accounts are all first person narratives, that is, the
editor ‘re-presents’ them using the direct speech form, sometimes betraying
the traces of their original enunciation.
In general, conversion narratives are retrospective accounts characteri-
zed, from a linguistic point of view, by the presence of a speaker, explicitly
signalled by the first person pronoun I, and the use of the past tense that
establishes a clear separation between the time of the narrated event and the
time of the speech event. This construction contributes to reinforce the sense
of distance between a past, ungodly I, and a present, regenerated I. While
Rogers’s testimonies are all constructed in this way, some of Walker’s accounts
introduce shifts in tense, from the past to the present and vice versa. Here are
a few examples drawn from the ‘Experiences of M.K.’, an account, given by a
woman, which stands out because of length and high style.30
89‘out of their owne mouths’?
When I take a view of my life upon the stage of this world, I may very well compare
it to a comicall Tragedy, or a tragical Comedy, or a labyrinth from one sin to another,
from one affliction to another. I was indeed the daughter of very godly and honest
parents, who diligently brought up their children in the feare of God. (1653, 161)
… I resolved there to commit the horrid act of murther upon his body, but God who
watcheth over his, whether they sleepe or wake, and worketh by meanes, which way
he pleaseth, at that time put an end to all my revengefull thoughts … (169)
… but marke, I pray you, the goodnesse of our God, who was with mee all this while,
and I was not aware of it … (175)
But now, I beseech you godly Christians, to take notice of the wonderfull workings
of our good God, whose judgements are unsearchable, and his waies past finding out,
that hee had knocked many times at the door of my heart … (177)
As these few examples show, content and coding time are marked as simul-
taneous by the occurrence of present tenses. Moreover, the second person
pronouns in the third and fourth passages signal the existence of another
participant to whom the discourse is addressed. Thus the written text
evokes a spoken context of utterance, it reproduces the interplay between
the convert’s oral performance and the assembly of believers purposefully
gathered to witness it. Walker’s choice to call forth the verbal dimension
of the original account shows the importance that intense, verbal exchange
had in his theological vision, an importance which reinforces the principle
of reform that held that believers must be able to ‘truly say’ what was in
their hearts.31
As mentioned above, Walker’s collection opens with an ‘Epistle’ to ‘To
the sober and spirituall Readers of this Booke’, signed by the Welsh Baptist/Fifth
Monarchist preacher Vavasor Powell who dwells on the meaning of ‘Experi-
ence’ and the role it has in Christian life. He also highlights the importance
of ‘experimental’ discourse:
That Christian beleeves strongest, that hath Experience to backe his faith, and the
Saint speakes sweetest and homest, that speakes experimentally; for that which cometh
from one spirituall heart, reacheth another spirituall heart. (1653, A2v)
Moreover, Powell advertises the collection as ‘worth [the readers’] buying, read-
ing, and perusing’. Reading proves crucial in the conversion process, producing
emotional response and ‘heart-knowledge’, a knowledge that ultimately leads
to a spiritual change and turns readers into narrators.32 While the preface to
Spirituall Experiences highlights the importance and function of ‘Experience’
in the converts’ life, the treatise at the end of it instructs ‘Those that enter
into Church fellowship’ (U2r) in church practice and duties. It also includes,
as the title page reads, the text of ‘a Covenant taken by each Member, And a
90 donatella pallotti
Confession of Faith, Professed’, to which a short letter is added that testifies
‘the putting out of a scandalous Member’.33
As mentioned above, Walker’s collection as a whole focuses principally
on the converts’ ‘experiences’ – the main body of the book – an attention that
is emphasised in the commendatory epistle by Powell. Little space is devoted
to congregational polity, a choice that reveals where the pastoral interests of
the minister lie.
Many factors concur in the experience of conversion and its representation.
Regeneration is indeed an inner re-creating of the believer by the action of the
Spirit of God, but it is also the result of a collaborative venture that involves
the participation of individuals, who act with agency and motives in discursive,
ideological and institutional environments. The study of the collections of
spiritual testimonies shows both the dialogic nature of their discourse, which
involves a ‘dispersal’ and/or multiplication of authorship, and the attempt to
locate a ‘working distinctiveness’34 for the ‘harmonizers’ of voices. They con-
sciously shape, order and publish works where these voices, otherwise destined
to fade away, can be heard and find legitimation. By readapting – transcribing
and arranging – existing, fleeting texts into another, ‘stabler’ medium, Rogers
and Walker contributed to instance the fervent interaction taking place among
members of independent religious communities. Their collections witness the
importance of collaborative activity in non-literary texts, an activity that is strictly
linked to the practices of textual transmission and the ways these practices are
understood and represented in a particular historical situation.
1 For intensification as ‘revitalized commitment to a faith’, see Rambo (1993, 12). This
article is an expanded and modified version of a paper discussed at the XXV Conference of
the Associazione Italiana di Anglistica (AIA), held in L’Aquila (15-17 September 2011). Since
the theme of the conference was: ‘Regenerating Communities, Territory, Voices. Memory and
Vision, my paper was more focused on spiritual regeneration than authorship.
2 When candidates for admission were ‘very unable to speake in publicke … as some
Maids, and others that are bashful, (or the like)’, they related ‘in private the account of Faith’
to a member chosen by the church, who either wrote down the testimony and brought it
into the church or else repeated it orally to the assembled congregation (Rogers 1653, 293).
3 The same definition with slightly different wording is also found on 30. The question
of allegiance to true church and true faith had become momentous with the Reformation and
the establishment of the various Protestant churches. In England, the political context for
conversion changed during the Elizabethan and early Stuart periods, so that conversion was
conceived, ‘at an ecclesiastical level, not principally in terms of Catholic versus Protestant …
but in terms of internal Protestant schism’ (Hindmarsh 2005, 34).
4 Rogers points out that there is not only one way to conversion but several ‘according
to the divers complexions, conditions, constitutions, dispositions, or the like, that [God] hath
to worke upon’ (1653, 367).
5 The sharing of experiences was, according to the Independent preacher Samuel Petto,
‘usefull 1. For conviction unto unrenewed men ... 2. For direction and encouragement ... 3.
91‘out of their owne mouths’?
For provocation: when they see what progresse others have made in the wayes of God, and
what communion with Christ they have injoyed herein; it giveth occasion unto their reflecting
upon themselves, and may create shame for former negligence, and become a spur unto future
diligence. 4. For confirmation and consolation …’ (1654b, O5r.).
6 It was emphasised, however, that only God could really know the truth about an
individual’s regeneration, ‘as unto its internal, real principle and state of the Souls of Men’;
the task of the church meeting was simply to assess ‘its evidences and fruits in their external
Demonstration, as unto a participation of the outward Privileges of a Regenerate State, and no
farther’ (Owen 1689, 4).
7 According to Bauman, these aspects characterize ‘all performance’ as well as ‘all com-
munication’ (1989, 264).
8 Puritan verbal activity, Jagodzinski reminds us, ‘is separated from its “popish” connections
with set prayers and private, auricular confession and transformed into public performance: preach-
ing, publication, and subjection to communal judgement and discipline. The Puritan imperative
is not spiritual isolationism but communication of the divine wisdom to others’ (1999, 65).
9 Protestant conversion narratives began to appear in great number, both as single accounts and
in collections, after the end of the Civil Wars. Radical Puritans were the first to publish their spiritual
experiences in years marked by strong eschatological expectations and a widely held belief in Christ’s
second coming. Politically, these are the years that saw the war in Ireland between the forces of the
English Parliament and the Irish Catholic army (1649-1652), the establishment of the Barebones
Parliament (July-December 1653), whose dissolution ushered in the Protectorate of Cromwell.
10 To these accounts, Rogers adds his own testimony ‘given in two Churches in England and
Ireland’ (1653, 419-439) and that of John Osborne ‘as was taken out of the Church Register
word for word’ (440-448). While Rogers’s own testimony is a first person account; Osborne’s
is a third person narrative that contains passages in quoted (‘direct’) speech.
11 Another popular collection, that was frequently reprinted in the early eighteenth century,
was James Janeway, A Token for Children (1672; part II, 1673), which included thirteen ‘exact’
accounts of ‘the Conversion, Holy and Exemplary Lives, and Joyful Deaths of several young
Children’ (taken from the subtitle), meant to save children from their ‘miserable state by Nature’
and from being ‘thrown into Hell Fire’ (1676 edn, A6v, A8r). At the turn of the seventeenth cen-
tury, the Baptist ‘comb-maker’ Charles Doe edited A Collection of Experience of the Work of Grace
(Never before Printed.) Or The Spirit of God working upon the Souls of several Persons (1700) that
contained three narratives published, as the subtitle reads, ‘Not to Applaud the Persons, but for
the comfort of Saints’ and in order to ‘convince the Unregenerate that there is indeed such a thing
as the working of the Spirit of God upon the Soul’. As Hindmarsh remarks, the narratives witness
the great influence of Bunyan, whose work and name are mentioned in two of them (2005, 55).
12 The concern with introspection and assurance, ‘the consistent application of the law
and the gospel to govern the narrative of conversion from a psychological state of … despair
to one of peace and joy’ (Hindmarsh 2005, 48) are aspects that mark a continuity with the
applied theology of the Elizabethan Puritans; the new aspect of the mid-seventeenth-century
narratives is, as Hindmarsh points out, in the very occasion that framed them: they are pre-
requisite for church membership (48).
13 Both the texts by Puritan divines and ministers and the creeds and platforms of Con-
gregationalism highlight the public dimension of the conversion narrative. In the Cambridge
(Mass.) Platform of 1648, for instance, the conversion narrative is described as ‘personall &
publick’; ‘personall’, because it related the speaker’s own inner experience ‘of Gods manner
of working upon the soul’; ‘publick’, because that experience had to be ‘declared’ before the
entire congregation in order to be admitted to full membership. By delivering their reports
‘personally with their own mouth’, the believers submitted themselves to public ‘examination’
and ‘trial’, thus displaying their commitment to the new faith (Winslow ed., 1653, 16); see
also Caldwell (1983, 50-51).
92 donatella pallotti
14 Payne investigates conversion as discourse in Anglo-American evangelicalism in the
period from 1740 to 1850, approximately. His approach, however, can be useful for early
Puritan testimonies as well.
15 In terms of genre, conversion narratives can be seen as instances of what Culpeper and
Kytö have defined as ‘speech-based’ texts, that is texts ‘that are based on an actual “real-life”
speech event’, texts that are, as far as the Early Modern period is concerned, ‘reconstructions
assisted by notes’ (2010, 17). The reconstruction involves ‘interpretation and editorial decisions’
(52), that are partly determined by the effects that editors intend to produce on the readership
as well as other contextual factors. The fact that conversion narratives are ‘speech-based’ texts
justifies no assumption that they are exact copy of their spoken ‘original’.
16 This aspect was not unknown to Puritan divines and ministers; they strongly encour-
aged group activities that allowed believers to share their experiences As Watkins reminds us,
believers would develop ‘the skill and confidence’ necessary for the public presentation of
their experiences ‘through years of family worship, repeating sermons, wrestling with Biblical
interpretation, and participating in Church life in general’ (1972, 234).
17 Payne argues that giving testimony of one’s own spiritual experience reinforces the
selfhood of the speaker, both as subject (the ‘I’ who speaks) and object (the ‘I’ that is spoken
about), a process that creates ‘the paradox of the self ’ (1998, 33-49).
18 In this regard, Samuel Petto admonishes: ‘Christians know not what they loose, by
burying their experiences: they disable themselves for strengthening the weake hands, and
confirming the feeble knees of others: and it is a great disadvantage to themselves’ (1654a, 182).
19 According to Watkins, the exchange of experiences is one of the factors cooperating in
the development of the spiritual autobiography (1972, 30-31).
20 On the notion of ‘faithfulness’ in speech presentation, see Short, Semino and Wynne
(1997 and 2002). In the 1997 study, Short, Semino, and Wynne suggest that we substitute
this notion ‘with that of the “evocation” of another’s voice. The task would then be that of
studying what practices and interpretative conventions are associated with different categories
of discourse presentation in different contexts’ (222).
21 John Rogers was commissioned by the Council of State to preach in Ireland as part of a
project to strengthen Puritanism after Cromwell’s victory. He was in Dublin, where he preached to
a congregation based at Christ Church cathedral, for a short time, from approximately August 1651
to the early months of 1652. He was back in England by March that year. Many of the members
of his congregation were Cromwellian officers and their wives (see Coolahan 2010, 231, 232).
Thus, the texts of the conversion narratives were produced in Ireland, and later printed in England.
22 Rogers also remarks that he has ‘taken summarily’ ‘the most ordinary sort’ of testimonies
(1653, 417). On another occasion Rogers’s words betray the degree of (manipulative) power
ministers may exercise on the converts’ texts. While illustrating ways of dealing with believ-
ers who ‘are very imperfect in utterance, and cannot express themselves as well as others’, and
therefore meet difficulties in relating their conversion stories in public, Rogers reveals that ‘[we]
get what we can from them’, and ‘though they be but words dropping sweetness, and savoring
of grace, yet put together, may make weight, and will signifie something well-spelled’ (291),
a practice that may imply a radical transformation of the spoken text: from broken words to
an intelligible account. Coolahan suggests that Rogers’s ‘editorial principles are not aesthetic
but reader-oriented, centring on novelty and an impulse to avoid duplication’ (2010, 235).
23 Many other women’s testimonies, however, lack this kind of information.
24 What I argue here is that the texts of the conversion narratives seem to be constructed,
by and large, as if they were faithful reports of an anterior, spoken discourse and to be under-
stood by readers as such.
25 In Rogers’s text, pagination is continuous up to page 412. A section with separate
pagination, (1)-(11) follows, suggesting an addition to the ‘original’ text. After this section,
pagination starts again from 413.
93‘out of their owne mouths’?
26 In his letter, Thomas Parker admits that he has ‘not seen’ (1650, 10) his sister’s book; yet
he charges her with ‘Heretical Opinions’ (5) and ‘Spiritual pride’ (16), urging her to ‘Return
to [her] former Principles’ (19). Revealingly, Parker censures Elizabeth for having published
her book: ‘your printing of a Book, beyond the Custom of your Sex, doth rankly smell’ (13),
and is ‘an attempt above your gifts and Sex’ (17).
27 On the whole, in Ohel, Rogers offers a defence of Independency and gives voice to his
millenarian beliefs. These convictions would soon lead him to embrace the Fifth Monarchist
cause, though he never advocated the use of weapons against the government. For a brief
biographical account of John Rogers, see Greaves (2004).
28 Spirituall Experiences of Sundry Beleevers was partially translated into German by
Theodor Undereyck in 1670. In 1698 Johann Heinrich Reizt included a German translation
of several testimonies, drawn from Walker’s collection, in his Historie der Wiedergebohrnen (see
Malena 2010). For a study of the reception of English Puritan literature on German Pietism,
see Damrau (2006).
29 Watkins points out that the most quoted Biblical verses are, in order, Matthew 9:28,
John 4:37 and Isaiah 55:1. The texts are often drawn from the Geneva translation (1972, 41).
30 The ‘Experiences of M.K.’ is found at the end of ‘Part 1’ (which constituted the first
edition), a position suggesting that, probably, Walker valued it more than other accounts
present in the collection.
31 It should be noted that self-scrutiny for religious ends was not only a Protestant prac-
tice. The Catholic faith, too, encouraged self-examination and evaluation in written forms
(see, for instance, Malena’s essay in the present volume). Moreover, men who wanted to join
the Jesuit order had to give a short account of their spiritual life, ‘usually in a formulaic way
comparable to that of the Protestant conversion narratives’ (Booy 2002, 11-12). Foley (1877-
1882) collects a number of these accounts where the candidate introduces himself with both
first and last names, then information about age, place of birth, family, parents’ religion, and
education received are added.
32 It is perhaps worth remembering that Augustine’s conversion, as described in his Con-
fessions 8.12.28, is linked with reading.
33 The letter ‘from a Church newly gathered’ informs other ‘Churches of Jesus Christ’
about the expulsion of an obstinate sinner and the danger he represents. Interestingly, the
document implicitly witnesses the possibility of ‘subversive’ infiltrations in the community.
34 Gordon McMullan’s phrase, quoted in Hirschfeld (2001, 619).
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