Grice ed Aconzio: l'implicatura di Satana

  In Chap. 3, Caravale investigates the long publishing success of Acontius’s Satan’s Stratagems in seventeenth-century England. After reconstructing the popularity of Acontius among the Dutch Arminians in the 1610s and 1620s, the chapter focuses first on the religious debates that involved Catholics, Arminians and Latitudinarians in 1630s England and then on the heated controversies which characterized the English Civil War in the 1640s. Particular attention is given to debates at the Westminster Assembly of Divines, where the Presbyterian Francis Cheynell suggested forming a Committee to examine Acontius’s book, which had just been (partially) translated into English and published by John Goodwin in 1647. The condemnation of the book issued by Cheynell’s Committee did not stop Acontius’s supporters from circulating his book widely. Indeed, new editions of Satan’s Stratagems were published in the early 1650s. This chapter follows this exciting publishing story as a significant part of the cultural and intellectual history of Revolutionary England.