ABSTRACT
This chapter demonstrates that there are shifts, and indeed inconsistencies, in Gerrard Winstanley's writing but they do not constitute a religious versus secular opposition and illustrates differing religious and scriptural interpretations of the foundations of political society. It explains the difficulty of drawing out a single unifying political thread from Winstanley's work and examine instead the Adamic knot that binds so many disparate threads together. The fascination with eschatology of much of Winstanley's writing reflected a contemporary preoccupation. To follow the thread of Adam through Winstanley's writings is thus to work with the variety and interplay of theological and political discourses. Indeed digging up of St George's Hill by Winstanley's Diggers might be seen as a prime example of action rather than idle talk, a kind of storming of the Bastille of the old order to hurry in the new. But Winstanley also stresses the limits to human actions.
