SEEKERS (CERCATORI). – Name given to many sects of Protestant illuminati and extremists.
The term s. refers to the pantheistic group of the ranters (= declaimers), led by John Saltmarsh, military chaplain at Cromwell’s headquarters from 1646 to 1647. Among them are counted Gerardo Winstanley, Giacomo Bauthumley, and the followers of the mystic John Everard, parish priest of Fairstaed (1575–1650). The ranters rejected the Bible, ecclesiastical organizations, the laws of the State, and above all the use of war. They held that the spirit had to free itself from every material thing, from every carnal aspect and every mode of reasoning, in order to immerse itself in the pure light of God. They sought God, but in himself, beyond all creation.
Another sect of s. bore the name of waiters (= those who wait); they rejected the Church, ecclesiastical functions, and the Sacraments, arguing that, after the age of the Apostles, no one had been marked by God through miracles and special manifestations to be a minister of the Church. Gathered in praying groups, they “waited” for God to raise up men capable of continuing the apostolic Church. In this “expectation” they formed nothing more than a provisional Church. Most of these illuminati joined the quakers (v.).
The “fifth monarchists” may be considered s.; under Cromwell they hoped to establish the “fifth kingdom” prophesied by Daniel. Very similar to these were the “muggletonians,” founded by L. Muggleton (1698), who awaited the millennial kingdom; they lasted until the 19th century. The “familists” and the “levellers” of the Cromwellian period also belong to the category of s. These various kinds of illuminati should not be confused with the shakers (v.).