Thesis (Ph. D.)--Vereinigte Friedrichs-Universität Halle-Wittenberg, 1912. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (p. [7]-11).

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This study explores the use of the doctrine of the offices of Christ (prophet, priest, and king) in the literature of the English separatists Henry Barrow (c.1550-1593) and Henry Ainsworth (1569-1622). No study to date explores the English separatists’ use of the doctrine in ecclesiological debates. During the period 1580 to 1620 the doctrine was more commonly referenced when discussing soteriology. Barrow and Ainsworth provide some of the clearest expressions of the doctrine of the offices of Christ in separatist works and their steadfastness in those beliefs in light of opposition make them good candidates for this research. This study sets out to answer the question: what was the significance of participation by the elect in the offices of Christ as used in Barrow and Ainsworth’s writings? This research focuses on the theology of Barrow and Ainsworth and does not consider the social or experiential aspects of their professed beliefs. This study provides a detailed analysis of the writings of Barrow and Ainsworth particularly noting their use of the offices of Christ in discussions of the visible church. It then examines the relationship of Barrow and Ainsworth’s Christology and ecclesiology, expressed through the offices of Christ, in their understanding of the visible church. Finally, this research compares their usage with works published in England from 1580 to 1620, considering whether their usage was distinct. Its findings challenge the traditional historiographical suggestions that purity, polity, discipline, and covenant were the central themes of Barrow and Ainsworth’s ecclesiology. This research suggests that, for Barrow and Ainsworth, the visible church was the visible expression of Christ on earth and the continuation of his earthly ministry begun at the incarnation. They believed that the visible church was the result of union with Christ, not the means of it. Through union with Christ, all the elect participated in Christ’s offices. Barrow and Ainsworth’s understanding of the visible church incorporated their understanding of Christ’s continuing work expressed in his offices of prophecy, priesthood, and kingship. Christ was immediately present in his visible church, working in the elect and through the elect as prophets, priests, and kings. The visible elect, when gathered, became the body of Christ on earth and as his body they continued the work of prophecy, priesthood, and kingship that he had begun.

Ainsworth's Magazine: A Miscellany of Romance, General Literature, and Art made its first appearance in February, 1842. Owned and edited by William Harrison Ainsworth, illustrated by George Cruikshank, published in London by Hugh Cunningham, it was a bargin at eighteen pence. To a greater extent than any of its predecessors, Ainsoworth's was a literary magazine. Previous successful monthlies had been owned by publishing houses, with literary editors at the finanical and ideological mercy of the publishers--according to the literary men. Ainswroth's hope was that a plan, which invests the real property and the real responsibility of a Magaine in literary hands, may give great freedom to writers...and therefore be more favourable to the prosperous exercise of their talents, than is frequently the case under established arrangements.1 This freedom, however, was not to be licence. Although free of a publisher's restrictions, this was to be a family magazine, "addressed not to Mothers only, but to Daughers."2 The necessity to preserve the virture and vacuity of the minds of these young persons was laready beginning to diminate the Victorian literary scene. Ainsworth's Magazine had its initial success assured in the person of its owner-editor, William Harrison Ainsworth. By the time he undertook proprietorship of a magazine, Ainsworth had been a publisher, an editor, a contributor to the popular annuals and monthlies of the day, and had written six best-selling romances. Historical romances; sporting, domestic, and social novels; travel books; scientific and pseudoscientific studies; and biographies were among the books with wied appeal, and they were given serious consideration in the magazine. Not only the books reviewed, but the reviews themselves, are an important part of the context of the writings of the novelists and prose writers of the era to whom we give our serious consideration today.

This thesis examines accounts of electricity in journalism, short stories, novels, poetry and instructional writings, composed between 1830 and 1880 by scientific investigators, popular practitioners and fiction authors. The writings are approached as diverse and often incongruous impressions of electricity, in which the use of figurative and narrative techniques brings into question distinctions between science and literature. It is proposed that the unusual combination of electricity’s historical characterisation as an elixir vitae, intense investigation by contemporary scientists, and close alliance with new technologies offered unique opportunities for imaginative speculation. The thesis contends that engaging with these conflicting characteristics created a synthesis of scientific, social and literary responses that defy epistemological and generic categorisation. Fictionality is approached in chapter two as a central feature of scientific conceptualisation, experiment and discovery, particularly in the work of Michael Faraday and James Clerk Maxwell. In chapters three and four, the landscape of popular non-fiction books and periodicals is mapped, to show the ways in which the period’s publication contexts and forums, reading patterns, and use of literary practices contributed to wider engagement with ideas about electricity. Chapters five and six focus on fiction writings, identifying parallels and divergences between actual electrical science and its fictional portrayal. Short stories are shown to have emphasised associations between electricity, neurosis, deformity and the occult, complicating contemporary scientific optimism and presenting electricity as an alluring yet dangerous phenomenon, which disordered the natural world and man’s relationship with it. These characteristics are identified further in the metaphorical references of several canonical novelists, in the exploitation of electricity, elixirs and power depicted by William Harrison Ainsworth and Edward Bulwer-Lytton, and through a case study of the text and reception of a popular novel about electricity by Benjamin Lumley. The thesis contends that electricity’s anomalous and protean nature produced distinctively hybrid responses that enhance our understanding of contemporary popular writing, its contexts and how it was read.