Irreconcilable Tensions in Lockean Discourse and Abeizer Coppe’s a Fiery Flying Roll

Irreconcilable Tensions in Lockean Discourse and Abeizer Coppe’s A Fiery Flying Roll

In An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, written in 1700, Enlightenment philosopher John Locke expounds his views on reason, revelation, and enthusiasm. In Chapter XIX, Of Enthusiasm, Locke attempts to distinguish between these three concepts through a methodical formulation, by first outlining the underlying concepts of truth and rationality and then exploring the perception and attainment of truth. For Locke, truth is defined to be that which is either self-evident or provable and may be accessed either through the faculties of human reason or the gift of divine revelation, but not through a self-induced enthusiasm driven by emotional conceit. Locke’s ideology aspires to be so entirely systematic and authoritative that we might use it to evaluate extremist English Ranter, Abiezer Coppe’s highly controversial text, A Fiery Flying Roll, which claims to be a transmission of the word of God through the author. Locke would require Coppe’s work to be composed wholly of self-evident and demonstrable truths in order for it to be a product of divine revelation; Coppe, however, seems to be overwhelmed by the machinations of an overactive imagination, and Locke might term Coppe a quintessential enthusiast.

In An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Locke sets out to define truth, but before delving into this definition, we should consider one of Locke’s foremost ideas concerning the human mind—tabula rasa, or the blank slate. Though Locke himself did not coin this term, it is useful to examine it nonetheless. The basic premise of this argument is that at birth the mind is devoid of any innate conceptions, but ideas are inscribed onto the mind by either being imbibed through sensory perception or cultivated by society. To Locke, then, the mind is a malleable object highly subject to external influences. The simplest way that the mind can be written on is through the receipt of...