ABSTRACT
Dissenters were the group of “non-conforming” Christians who did not accept the religious authority of the Anglican Church after the restoration of Charles II. The movement hailed a more global, cosmopolitan world through concept of individual conscience. The legal delimitation of Dissenters’ freedom after the Restoration structured the confessional and political resistance of Quakers, Levellers, Anabaptists, Presbyterians, and others who refused the authority of the church. This structure of feeling persists even after the Protestant settlement and animates works like Paradise Lost and Robinson Crusoe. It defines ideas about global religious difference, gives rise to modern evangelicalism, and, ultimately, shapes modern liberalism.
