The
Ranters were an
antinomian and spiritualistic English sect in the time of the
Commonwealth, who may be described as the remains of the
Seekers. Their central idea was
pantheistic, that God is essentially in every creature, but though many of them were sincere and honest in their attempt to express the doctrine of the Divine immanence, they were in the main unable to hold the balance. They denied the authority of the Church, of
scripture, of the current ministry and of services, calling on men to hearken to
Jesus Christ within them. Many of them seem to have rejected a belief in
immortality and in a personal God, and in many ways they resemble the
Brethren of the Free Spirit in the 14th century. Their vague pantheism landed them in moral confusion, and many of them were marked by fierce fanaticism. How far the accusation of sexual immorality brought against them is fair is hard to say, but they seem to have been a really serious danger to the government. They were largely recruited from the common people, and there is plenty of evidence to show that the movement was widespread. The Ranters came into contact and even rivalry with the early
Quakers, who were often unjustly associated with them. The truth is that the positive message of the Friends helped to save England from being overrun with Ranterism.
In the middle of the 19th century the name was often applied to the Primitive Methodists[?], with reference to their crude and often noisy preaching.
Updated from the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica