John Champneys was a 16th-century English religious radical. He is known for authoring The Harvest is at hand (1548), a Calvinist anti-clerical tract which targeted Roman Catholic and Evangelical preaching.[1][2]
Champneys was from Somerset.[3] On 27 April 1549, he was brought before Archbishop Thomas Cranmer at St Paul's Cathedral to repent various heresies, including the idea that once a person is spiritually reborn in Christ, they cannot sin, denying that those reborn in Christ could lose their godly love or break Christ's commandments, and of promoting the belief that people do not possess a spirit enabling them to remain righteous in Christ. Additionally, he was accused of advocating that God's chosen people could enjoy worldly possessions fully.[4] He was subsequently convicted of heresy and did not appear to continue publishing after his conviction.[1][5] The contemporaneous biographer John Strype described Champneys and Henry Hart, also accused of heretical teachings, as "the first that made separation from the reformed Church of England".[3]
Champneys died in or after 1559.[4]
References
edit- ^ a b Richards, Celyn David (26 June 2023). The English Print Trade in the Reign of Edward VI, 1547–1553. BRILL. p. 72. ISBN 978-90-04-51017-3.
- ^ Lee, Sidney (1887). . Dictionary of National Biography. Vol. 10. p. 36.
- ^ a b Marshall, Peter; Ryrie, Alec (30 May 2002). The Beginnings of English Protestantism. Cambridge University Press. p. 227. ISBN 978-0-521-00324-7.
- ^ a b Tom Betteridge (23 September 2004). "Champneys, John (d. in or after 1559)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/5096. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
- ^ Risjord, Norman K. (2001). The Colonists. Rowman & Littlefield. p. 81. ISBN 978-0-7425-2073-8.