Jacob Bauthumley

Jacob Bauthumley or Bottomley (1613–1692) was an English radical religious writer, usually identified as a central figure among the Ranters. He served as part of the New Model Army, leaving in March 1650. After the Restoration of 1660, he took up a job as a librarian in Leicester, where he produced a book of extracts from John Foxe, published in 1676.

Biography

Bauthumley is known principally for The Light and Dark Sides of God (1650). This work was regarded as blasphemous for its pantheistic tendencies, including the following:

After the Blasphemy Act of August 1650, he was arrested, convicted, and burned through the tongue. Norman Cohn states that he was in the Army while writing the pamphlet, and took part in Ranter and Quaker meetings in Leicestershire in the mid-1650s. Christopher Hill says that he left the Army in March 1650. His family had earlier suffered ostracism, for permitting sermons by Jeremiah Burroughes to be said in their house; he was a shoemaker.

After the Restoration of 1660 he was a librarian in Leicester. He produced a book of extracts from John Foxe, published in 1676. and that Christ was more divine than other men. He considered that the real Devil lay in human nature, while God dwells in the flesh of man.

Historian E. P. Thompson calls his views 'quasi-pantheistic' in their re-definition of God and Christ, and quotes A. L. Morton to the effect that this is the central Ranter doctrine.

Selected publications

The Light and Dark Sides of God, Or, A Plain and Brief Discourse of the Light Side (1650)