[63] Contemporary writers held that the Giles Randall who preached in "the Spital" was the translator. Robert Baillie, Principal of Glasgow University, in his work on Anabaptisme, pp. 102-103, speaks of Randall who preached in "the Spital," and refers to his increasing temerity as shown by the fact that "he hath lately printed two very dangerous books and set his Preface before each of them, composed as he professes long ago by Popish Priests, the one by a Dutch Frier and the other by an English Capuchine." Baillie further refers to the "deadly poison" of these books as shown in Benjamin Bourne's Description and Confutation of Mysticall Antichrist, the Familists (1646), where "the dangerous books" are named, as Theologia Germanica, the Bright Star, Divinity and Philosophy Dissected. Edward's Gangraena also identifies Randall the preacher with the translator of "Popish Books written by Priests and Friers," citing as an example "The Vision of God by Cardinall Cusanus," op. cit. (1646), part iii.
[64] Preface.
[65] Bourne's Description and Confutation and Baillie's Anabaptisme. It seems likely that there was an earlier edition of the Theologia than this of 1648, as the chapters and pages quoted by Bourne do not correspond with those of the 1648 edition, whose title-page has this clause: "Also a Treatise of the Soul and other additions not before printed."
[66] Gangraena, part iii.
[67] Goodwin's Cretensis (1646). The book, entitled Divinity and Philosophy Dissected, and attributed by implication to Randall, was published in Amsterdam in 1644, with the following title-page:
"Divinity & Philosophy Dissected, & set forth by a mad man.
"The first Book divided into 3 Chapters.
"Chap. I. The description of the World in man's heart with the
Articles of the Christian Faith.
"Chap. II. A description of one Spirit acting in all, which some
affirme is God.
"Chap. III. A description of the Scripture according to the
history and mystery thereof.
"Amsterdam, 1644."
[68] Survey, etc., part ii. chap. xlvii. p. 53.
[69] The only copy of Randall's Bright Starre which I have been able to locate is in the Lambeth Palace Library. A copy of it formerly belonged to the learned Quaker, Benjamin Furly, and was sold with his remarkable collection of books in 1714.
[70] This term, "Children of the Light," was the name by which Friends, or Quakers, first called themselves. It was plainly a term current at the time for a Christian who put the emphasis on inward life and personal experience.
[71] Preface to Theologia.