The Post Reformation

The 17th century was a dynamic period characterized by huge political and social changes, including the Civil War, the execution of Charles I, the Commonwealth and the Restoration. The Britain of 1714 was recognizably more modern than it was in 1603. At the heart of these changes was religion and the search for an acceptable religious settlement, which stimulated the Pilgrim Fathers to leave to settle America, the Popish plot and the Glorious Revolution in which James II was kicked off the throne. This book looks at both the private aspects of human beliefs and practices and also institutional religion, investigating the growing competition between rival versions of Christianity and the growing expectation that individuals should be allowed to worship as they saw fit.

Each of the figures examined in this study—John Dee, John Donne, Sir Kenelm Digby, Henry and Thomas Vaughan, and Jane Lead—is concerned with the ways in which God can be approached or experienced. Michael Martin analyzes the ways in which the encounter with God is figured among these early modern writers who inhabit the shared cultural space of poets and preachers, mystics and scientists. The three main themes that inform this study are Cura animarum, the care of souls, and the diminished role of spiritual direction in post-Reformation religious life; the rise of scientific rationality; and the struggle against the disappearance of the Holy. Arising from the methods and commitments of phenomenology, the primary mode of inquiry of this study resides in contemplation, not in a religious sense, but in the realm of perception, attendance, and acceptance. Martin portrays figures such as Dee, Digby, and Thomas Vaughan not as the eccentrics they are often depicted to have been, but rather as participating in a religious mainstream that had been radically altered by the disappearance of any kind of mandatory or regular spiritual direction, a problem which was further complicated and exacerbated by the rise of science. Thus this study contributes to a reconfiguration of our notion of what ‘religious orthodoxy’ really meant during the period, and calls into question our own assumptions about what is (or was) ‘orthodox’ and ‘heterodox.’

In this book, Rinse Reeling Brouwer identifies the sources of Barth’s conversation and analyses Barth’s use and his (mis)understandings of them. He sketches Barth’s treatment of some authors that are representative for successive stages of the elder protestant theology. Each chapter focuses on one of the topics in Christian Dogmatics, with the last chapter exploring the way in which Barth’s role as a pupil of Heppe influenced the ultimate shaping of the Church Dogmatics.

A major study reevaluating the primary sources of the post-Reformation period to determine how consistent they are with the thinking of the Reformers on Scripture.

This collection of essays by historians and literary scholars treats English history and culture from the Henrician Reformation to the Glorious Revolution as a single coherent period in which religion is a dominant element in political and cultural life. It seeks to explore the centrality of the religion-politics nexus for this whole period through examining a wide variety of literary and non-literary texts, from plays and poems to devotional treatises, political treatises and histories. It breaks down normal distinctions between Tudor and Stuart, pre- and post-Restoration periods to reveal a coherent (though not all serene and untroubled) post-Reformation culture struggling with major issues of belief, practice, and authority.

This book examines the influence of the monastic tradition beyond the Reformation. Where the built monastic environment had been dissolved, desire for the spiritual benefits of monastic living still echoed within theological and spiritual writing of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries as a virtual exegetical template. The volume considers how the writings of monastic authors were appropriated in post-Reformation movements by those seeking a more fervent spiritual life, and how the concept of an internal cloister of monastic/ascetic spirituality influenced several Anglican writers during the Restoration. There is a careful examination of the monastic influence upon the Wesleys and the foundation and rise of Methodism. Drawing on a range of primary sources, the book will be of particular interest to scholars of monastic and Methodist history, and to those engaged in researching ecclesiology and in ecumenical dialogues.

New scrutinies of the most important political and religious debates of the post-Reformation period. The consequences of the Reformation and the church/state polity it created have always been an area of important scholarly debate. The essays in this volume, by many of the leading scholars of the period, revisit many of the important issues during the period from the Henrician Reformation to the Glorious Revolution: theology, political structures, the relationship of theology and secular ideologies, and the Civil War. Topics include Puritan networks and nomenclature in England and in the New World; examinations of the changing theology of the Church in the century after the Reformation; the evolving relationship of art and protestantism; the providentialist thinking of Charles I;the operation of the penal laws against Catholics; and protestantism in the localities of Yorkshire and Norwich. KENNETH FINCHAM is Reader in History at the University of Kent; Professor PETER LAKE teaches in the Department of History at Princeton University. Contributors: THOMAS COGSWELL, RICHARD CUST, PATRICK COLLINSON, THOMAS FREEMAN, PETER LAKE, SUSAN HARDMAN MOORE, DIARMAID MACCULLOCH, ANTHONY MILTON, PAUL SEAVER, WILLIAM SHEILS

A major study reevaluating the primary sources of the post-Reformation period to determine how consistent they are with the thinking of the Reformers on theological prolegomena.