The Ranters denied the authority of churches, of Scripture, of the current ministry and of services, instead calling on men to listen to the divine within them.
[3] By the 1660s, the term became attached to any group that promoted theological deviance but since most of the literary evidence we have was created by those opposed to Ranters in general, it is difficult to determine their exact creed.
"[2]They embraced antinomianism and believed that Christians are freed by grace from the necessity of obeying Mosaic Law, rejecting the very notion of obedience.
"[2]Gerrard Winstanley, a leader of another English dissenting group called the Diggers, commented on Ranter principles in characterizing them by their "general lack of moral values or restraint in worldly pleasures".
[9] John Bunyan, author of Pilgrim's Progress, wrote in his autobiography, Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners, that he had encountered Ranters prior to his Baptist conversion.
Although the Quakers retained their loose, sect-like character until the 1660s, they began to formalize their worship practices and set of beliefs in order to gain some stability in the New World; this in turn pushed out those who did not fall in line, creating a group of people referred to as Ranters.
[4] (Whether these people were directly inspired by the Ranters in England or if the moniker was simply imported via anti-Ranter pamphlets that were so popular during this era is debatable.)
The historian J. C. Davis has suggested that the Ranters were a myth created by conservatives in order to endorse traditional values by comparison with an unimaginably radical other.