ABSTRACT
This chapter explores how Cennick’s understanding of the priorities established by orthodox eschatology – death, judgement, heaven, and hell – were replaced by a different perspective, calibrated by the trajectories of bridal mysticism and blood-and-wounds imagery. It exemplifies what exactly the meant for Cennick, and how a number of contemporary events and preoccupations combined to reinforce his new priorities. The chapter begins with how a chance encounter with the writings of Herman Hugo grew into a lifelong obsession. Cennick’s eschatology was to some extent an amalgam of the various positions he encountered and continued to evolve in the course of his life. The emphasis in the hymns was unmistakably that of his twin obsessions: bridal mysticism and blood-and-wounds imagery. The 1750s witnessed an intense interest in eschatology both in Methodist circles and in society at large, partly stimulated by the earthquakes which struck London in 1750 and were widely interpreted apocalyptically.
