Get 20M+ Full-Text Papers For Less Than $1.50/day. Start a 14-Day Trial for You or Your Team.

Learn More →

Pregnant Silence and Mystical Birth: Quaker Worship in the Seventeenth Century and the Subversive Practices of Silence

Pregnant Silence and Mystical Birth: Quaker Worship in the Seventeenth Century and the Subversive... Restoration Volume 43.1 Pregnant Silence and Mystical Birth: Quaker Worship in the Seventeenth Century and the Subversive Practices of Silence Ana M. Acosta Brooklyn College, City University of New York The excellency of this silent waiting upon God doth appear, in that it is impossible for the Enemy, viz, the Devil, to counterfeit it, so as for any Soul to be deceived or deluded by him, in the exercise thereof. Robert Barclay, An Apology for the True Christian Divinity, 1678 For early Quakers, as Robert Barclay claimed in the passage above, “Silent waiting upon God” ensured a condition in which God’s truth can manifest itself without the possibility of distortion or falsity inherent to speech and sound. Unlike the potential for duplicity and mendacity that generally haunts words, silence cannot be faked: it is what it is. And yet, silence is not so simple. That it is what it is can only be avowed strictly speaking from the perspective of sound, since silence can have multiple meanings, and, of course, from a Quaker perspective, there can be no guarantee that “the enemy” is not already comfortably lodged in the mind of the pre-silence worshiper. This essay explores how the http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Restoration: Studies in English Literary Culture, 1660-1700 University of Tennessee

Pregnant Silence and Mystical Birth: Quaker Worship in the Seventeenth Century and the Subversive Practices of Silence

Download PDF
22 pages

Loading next page...
 
/lp/university-of-tennessee/pregnant-silence-and-mystical-birth-quaker-worship-in-the-seventeenth-da0MLdjjNV

References

References for this paper are not available at this time. We will be adding them shortly, thank you for your patience.

Publisher
University of Tennessee
Copyright
Copyright © University of Maryland
ISSN
1941-952X

Abstract

Restoration Volume 43.1 Pregnant Silence and Mystical Birth: Quaker Worship in the Seventeenth Century and the Subversive Practices of Silence Ana M. Acosta Brooklyn College, City University of New York The excellency of this silent waiting upon God doth appear, in that it is impossible for the Enemy, viz, the Devil, to counterfeit it, so as for any Soul to be deceived or deluded by him, in the exercise thereof. Robert Barclay, An Apology for the True Christian Divinity, 1678 For early Quakers, as Robert Barclay claimed in the passage above, “Silent waiting upon God” ensured a condition in which God’s truth can manifest itself without the possibility of distortion or falsity inherent to speech and sound. Unlike the potential for duplicity and mendacity that generally haunts words, silence cannot be faked: it is what it is. And yet, silence is not so simple. That it is what it is can only be avowed strictly speaking from the perspective of sound, since silence can have multiple meanings, and, of course, from a Quaker perspective, there can be no guarantee that “the enemy” is not already comfortably lodged in the mind of the pre-silence worshiper. This essay explores how the

Journal

Restoration: Studies in English Literary Culture, 1660-1700 – University of Tennessee

Published: Jul 19, 2019

There are no references for this article.