SOURCE: "Gerrard Winstanley's Experimental Knowledge of God (The Perception of the Spirit and the Acting of Reason)," The Journal of Ecclesiastical History, Vol. 39, No. 2, April, 1988, pp. 184-201.

In the following essay, Baxter examines Winstanley's religious pamphlets in a study of Winstanley's use of words, language, and concepts.

This essay is an attempt to find out what Winstanley meant by certain terms, using close textual analysis. Extensive work has already been done in locating Winstanley in political, theological and, as far as possible, intellectual terms. This will receive only cursory treatment here. A scholarly tradition can be traced from Bernstein, through Petergorsky and Margaret James to Christopher Hill, which places Winstanley at the beginning of the development of materialist socialism although, it is suggested, his ideas proved to be a false start and went underground for a century or more.¹ This view derives from his later works, especially The...