"For God's sake build not your faith upon Tradition, 'tis as rotten as a rotten Post"
About this Quote
Culpeper isn’t politely urging open-mindedness; he’s picking a fight with the entire knowledge economy of 17th-century England. “For God’s sake” sounds devotional, but it’s also a provocation: stop treating inherited authority as holy. The line turns on a deliberately crude image - Tradition as “a rotten Post” - a structural support that looks sturdy until you lean on it and it collapses. He’s mocking the comfort people take in age and repetition, insisting that oldness is not evidence.
The intent is practical, not abstract. Culpeper worked at the fault line where medicine, astrology, religion, and class power met. Learned physicians and institutions like the College of Physicians guarded Latin texts and credentialed expertise; “Tradition” wasn’t just ideas, it was a gatekeeping mechanism. By calling it rotten, he’s delegitimizing the cultural infrastructure that kept ordinary people dependent on elites for care and interpretation.
Subtext: faith should be built on something closer to observation, usefulness, and lived outcomes. He’s not rejecting belief so much as relocating it - away from reverence for the past and toward accountable knowledge. There’s an early modern, almost street-level empiricism here: if a remedy works, it earns trust; if it doesn’t, no amount of citation should save it.
Context sharpens the cynicism. England is in civil-war-era upheaval, when political and religious “traditions” are visibly failing. Culpeper’s jab lands because everyone can see institutions splintering. His rhetoric exploits that instability: if the old posts are already rotting, why keep building your house on them?
The intent is practical, not abstract. Culpeper worked at the fault line where medicine, astrology, religion, and class power met. Learned physicians and institutions like the College of Physicians guarded Latin texts and credentialed expertise; “Tradition” wasn’t just ideas, it was a gatekeeping mechanism. By calling it rotten, he’s delegitimizing the cultural infrastructure that kept ordinary people dependent on elites for care and interpretation.
Subtext: faith should be built on something closer to observation, usefulness, and lived outcomes. He’s not rejecting belief so much as relocating it - away from reverence for the past and toward accountable knowledge. There’s an early modern, almost street-level empiricism here: if a remedy works, it earns trust; if it doesn’t, no amount of citation should save it.
Context sharpens the cynicism. England is in civil-war-era upheaval, when political and religious “traditions” are visibly failing. Culpeper’s jab lands because everyone can see institutions splintering. His rhetoric exploits that instability: if the old posts are already rotting, why keep building your house on them?
Quote Details
| Topic | Faith |
|---|
More Quotes by Nicholas
Add to List
