Seekers (Cercatori)
Name of many sects of illuminati and Protestant extremists.
As Seekers are cited the pantheist group of the Ranters (= declaimers), led by John Saltmarsh, military chaplain of Cromwell’s headquarters from 1646 to 1647. Among them are numbered Gerard Winstanley, James Bauthumley, and the followers of the mystic John Everard, parish priest of Fairstead (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 must be freed from all matter, from every carnal aspect, from every reasoning, in order to be immersed in the pure light of God. They sought God, but in Himself, beyond all creation.
Another sect of Seekers bore the name of Waiters (= expectants); they rejected the Church, ecclesiastical functions, and the Sacraments, on the grounds that, since the apostolic age, no one had been marked by God through miracles and special manifestations to be a minister of the Church. Gathered in prayer 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 “Quintomonarchists” may also be considered Seekers; under Cromwell they hoped to found the “fifth kingdom” foretold by Daniel. Very similar to these were the “Muggletonians,” founded by L. Muggleton (1698), who awaited the millennium; they lasted until the 19th century. To the category of Seekers also belong the “Familists” and the “Levellers” of the Cromwellian era. These various kinds of illuminati must Shakers (v.).
Leon C. Cristiani