Anselment 1978

Anselment, Raymond A. "'The Church Militant': George Herbert and the Metamorphoses of Christian History." Huntington Library Quarterly 41.4 (Aug 1978): 299-316.

"Assuming a satiric vein divinely sanctioned among the biblical prophets, Herbert exuberantly celebrates the moments of religion's apparent progress and ironicallye xposes the folly of self-seeking error. although an intensity of feeling may at times reveal the speaker's own involvement, a prophetic irony always sees in the metamorphoses of history the larger meaning of a divine providence." (302-3)

"When the providential course of history completes its final metamorphosis, the church will assume temporal and spatial permanence. An insistently teleological direction will paradoxically prove circular, and the climactic moment anticipated throughout the poem will produce in its end the beginning. Literally and figuratively 'The Church Militant' promises resolution." (315)