The Militant Church Triumphant Over The Dragon And His Angels

Before the outbreak of hostilities between Charles I and the Long Parliament, the King had authorized a regular monthly fast for the realm which members of parliament later adopted as a program of national humiliation. At the invitation of individual members of parliament, two preachers, generally leading puritan clerics connected with the Westminster Assembly, which had been convened for the purpose of reforming the Church of England, were invited to speak. Drawing from some 240 published sermons, Professor Wilson presents a survey of the program, giving detailed scrutiny to the form and contents of the sermons. His aim throughout is to clarify the puritans' conceptions of the relationship between their religious movement and the political events of the period, and to assess the importance of these sermons for the interpretation of Puritanism. Originally published in 1969. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

This is the first comprehensive study of the revival and appropriation of the Roman triumph from the 1580s to the 1650s. English versions of the triumph included ceremonial re-enactments, poetic or pictorial representations, and stage performances. As well as many non-canonical writers, Spenser, Marlowe, Shakespeare, Marvell, and Milton all produced versions. The book includes an original survey of ancient literary models and the work of humanist antiquarians, and shows how all its texts are implicated in contemporary political conflicts and discourses.

In the opening chapter of the Confession, the divines of Westminster included a clause that implied that there would no longer be any special immediate revelation from God. Means by which God had once communicated the divine will, such as dreams, visions, and the miraculous gifts of the Spirit, were said to be no longer available. However, many of the authors of the WCF accepted that prophecy continued in their time, and a number of them apparently believed that disclosure of God's will through dreams, visions, and angelic communication remained possible. How is the cessationist clause of WCF 1:1 to be read in the light of these claims? This book reconciles this paradox in a detailed study of the writings of the authors of the Westminster Confession of Faith.

Milton's Paradise Lost, the most eloquent, most intellectually daring, most learned, and most sublime poem in the English language, is a poem about angels. It is told by and of angels; it relies upon their conflicts, communications, and miscommunications. They are the creatures of Milton's narrative, through which he sets the Fall of humankind against a cosmic background. Milton's angels are real beings, and the stories he tells about them rely on his understanding of what they were and how they acted. While he was unique in the sublimity of his imaginative rendering of angels, he was not alone in writing about them. Several early-modern English poets wrote epics that explore the actions of and grounds of knowledge about angels. Angels were intimately linked to theories of representation, and theology could be a creative force. Natural philosophers and theologians too found it interesting or necessary to explore angel doctrine. Angels did not disappear in Reformation theology: though centuries of Catholic traditions were stripped away, Protestants used them in inventive ways, adapting tradition to new doctrines and to shifting perceptions of the world. Angels continued to inhabit all kinds of writing, and shape the experience and understanding of the world. Milton's Angels: The Early-Modern Imagination explores the fate of angels in Reformation Britain, and shows how and why Paradise Lost is a poem about angels that is both shockingly literal and sublimely imaginative.