Faith & Spirit Quote by John Biddle

Biddle is staging a defense before he ever states his “opinion.” The sentence reads like a legal deposition crossed with a prayer: “long, impartial enquiry,” “obliged,” “principles of reason and Scripture.” In mid-17th-century England, where theological deviation could mean prison, exile, or worse, that framing isn’t piety for piety’s sake; it’s survival strategy. He’s telling church and state authorities: I didn’t arrive here through stubbornness, novelty-chasing, or sedition. I arrived here through the very methods you claim to honor.

The subtext is a quiet revolt against enforced conformity. By insisting on “impartial enquiry,” Biddle elevates the individual conscience and the disciplined reader over inherited creeds and clerical gatekeeping. He also refuses the era’s false choice between rational inquiry and spiritual submission. The line “calling upon God” doesn’t cancel reason; it sanctifies investigation as a devotional act. That’s a pointed move from a clergyman: he’s arguing that fidelity to God may require disobedience to institutions that brand themselves as God’s mouthpiece.

Context sharpens the stakes. Biddle is associated with early English anti-Trinitarianism, a position treated as radioactive heresy. So the rhetoric of being “obliged” matters: he casts his conclusion as reluctant necessity, not ideological swagger. It’s the language of someone trying to make dissent sound like duty - and to make a dangerous idea sound like the most responsible, orthodox thing in the world.