Gangraena is a book by Englishpuritan clergymanThomas Edwards, published in 1646. A notorious work ofheresiography, it appeared the year afterEphraim Pagitt'sHeresiography. These two books attempted to catalogue the fissiparous Protestant congregations of the time, in England particularly, into recognised sects or beliefs. Pagitt worked with 40 to 50 categories, Edwards went further with around three times as many, compiling a list of the practices of the Independents and more extreme radicals:
Thomas Edwards, in hisGangraena (1645), enumerated, with uncritical exaggeration, no less than sixteen sects and one hundred and seventy-six miscellaneous "errors, heresies and blasphemies," exclusive ofpopery anddeism.[1]
Gangraena is generally described as an alarmist work, deducing a collapse of national polity from the ramification of different religious creeds. Typically, theBaptistHanserd Knollys was accused of being anAnabaptist.[2]Heresy is foregrounded, and the analogy suggested that heresy is to the soul aswitchcraft to the body.[3] Edwards was an unsparing writer andGangraena is described as "monumentally vituperative".[4] The title itself refers to2 Timothy 2:17, and "canker" in theKing James version.
It is not really a unified work, called a "complex, ramshackle text" by Nicholas Tyacke.[5] It appeared in three volumes, with information added from correspondents, andRichard Baxter in particular was also a contributor.[6] Scholarly opinions on it are now mixed, having in the past been somewhat dismissive of the work as paranoid and probably counter-productive in the way of providing and circulating a menu of "heretical" options. Some scholars now see it as made more coherent by its inferences from and to the diabolical element, and more readable casually for the audience of the times, than it has in the past been allowed credit.[7]
In the work, as the first ideological identification ofLevellers, Edwards summed up Levellers' views and attacked their radical political egalitarianism that showed no respect for the constitution. The prime targets in part III of his work were the men who were to be recognized as the leaders of the Leveller party.[8]
It provoked over 30 pamphlet responses in the period 1646-7, mostly hostile.[9] Among them were works byJeremiah Burroughes,[10]John Goodwin,[11]John Lilburne,John Saltmarsh andWilliam Walwyn.
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