Three Restoration Divines Barrow South Tillotson Selected Sermons 2 2 1976

In this highly innovative study, Ian Green examines the complete array of Protestant titles published in England from the 1530s to the 1720s. These range from the large specialist volumes at the top to cheap tracts at the bottom, from radical on one wing to conservative on the other, and from instructive and devotional manuals to edifying-cum-entertaining works such as religious verse and cautionary tales. Wherever possible the author adopts a statistical approach to permit a focus on those works which sold most copies over a number of years, and in an annotated Appendix provides a brief description of over seven hundred best selling or steady selling religious titles of the period. A close study of these texts and the forms in which they were offered to the public suggests a rapid diversification of both the types of work published and of the readerships at which they were targeted. It also demonstrates shrewd publishers' frequent attempts to plug gaps in a rapidly expanding market. Where previous studies of print have tended to focus on the polemical and the sensational, this one highlights the didactic, devotional, and consensual elements found in most steady selling works. It is also suggested that in these works there were at least three Protestantisms on offer an orthodox, clerical version, a moralistic, rational version favoured by the educated laity, and a popular version that was barely Protestant at all and that the impact of these probably varied both within and between different readerships. These conclusions shed much light not only on the means by which English Protestantism was disseminated, but also on the doctrinally and culturally diffused nature of English Protestantism by the end of the Stuart period. Both the text and the appendix should prove invaluable to anyone interested in the history of the Reformation or in printing as a medium of education and communication in early modern England.

A major contribution to Puritan scholarship, 'Puritans and Predestination' presents the first consistent and thorough historical analysis of a key Puritan theological concept - predestination. For almost two centuries prior to 1695, English religious and cultural life endured a period of great upheaval. Dewey Wallace illuminates this complex era by tracing patterns of religious thought that took root in early English Protestantism and by explaining their social, cultural, and ecclesiastical implications. 'Puritans and Predestination' concludes that the differences between Puritan and Anglican theology were often subtle and sometimes nonexistent. Central to Protestant theology was the doctrine of grace - the notion that salvation was a divine gift, a free gift to those who believed. Among the many elements that constituted the doctrine of grace, predestination was the foremost. Wallace believes that shifting attitudes toward and emphases on predestination serve as both a measure of the extent of theological unity and an index of theological change. Among the significant conclusions documented in the course of this study are the importance of the Bucerian order of salvation in the early English Reformation, the anachronistic character of reading sharp differences in outlook between Puritan and Anglican, and the centrality of the piety and theology of grace in Puritanism. Wallace also explores the radically innovative character of the Laudian and Arminian theology, the inroads of rationalistic moralism into theology by the middle of the seventeenth century, and the emergence among later Stuart Dissenters of an evangelical pietism prefiguring the religion of the awakenings. This book will be indispensable to those interested in Puritanism and the theology of the Church of England.

A major contribution to Puritan scholarship, 'Puritans and Predestination' presents the first consistent and thorough historical analysis of a key Puritan theological concept - predestination. For almost two centuries prior to 1695, English religious and cultural life endured a period of great upheaval. Dewey Wallace illuminates this complex era by tracing patterns of religious thought that took root in early English Protestantism and by explaining their social, cultural, and ecclesiastical implications. 'Puritans and Predestination' concludes that the differences between Puritan and Anglican theology were often subtle and sometimes nonexistent. Central to Protestant theology was the doctrine of grace - the notion that salvation was a divine gift, a free gift to those who believed. Among the many elements that constituted the doctrine of grace, predestination was the foremost. Wallace believes that shifting attitudes toward and emphases on predestination serve as both a measure of the extent of theological unity and an index of theological change. Among the significant conclusions documented in the course of this study are the importance of the Bucerian order of salvation in the early English Reformation, the anachronistic character of reading sharp differences in outlook between Puritan and Anglican, and the centrality of the piety and theology of grace in Puritanism. Wallace also explores the radically innovative character of the Laudian and Arminian theology, the inroads of rationalistic moralism into theology by the middle of the seventeenth century, and the emergence among later Stuart Dissenters of an evangelical pietism prefiguring the religion of the awakenings. This book will be indispensable to those interested in Puritanism and the theology of the Church of England.

This study presents a contextual and intertextual reading of James Thomson's (1700--1748) poem »The Seasons«, taking into consideration some of the presuppositions and habitus of the text's cultural community and the function of the poem's many intertextual allusions. Contemporary assumptions about processes of perception, reading and the practice of virtue call for an approach to the poem that takes literary pre-texts into account. An intertextual reading reveals »The Seasons«, though heterogeneous on its surface, as coherent in its cultural functionality: It aims to train readers into virtuous habits and asserts the powers of poetic discourse as a culturally relevant force especially in relation to the discourse of natural philosophy. With the emergence of natural philosophy as a cultural activity of considerable market value, poetry had to legitimise itself as a culturally relevant pursuit. An analysis of the poem's intertext, in particular allusions to Virgil, Ovid and Milton, but also to genre conventions such as pastoral, romance, sermon and panegyric, uncovers textual strategies that attempt to re-legitimise poetry on the one hand by transposing scientific method into a poetic environment. On the other hand, the text demonstrates, using its intertext, that poetry has powers which reach beyond the rational and empirical agenda of natural philosophy and that poetry has a distinctive cultural function as a provider of vision, insight and moral knowledge. Diese Studie legt eine historisch kontextualisierte Interpretation von James Thomson's (1700--1748) Gedicht »The Seasons« vor, die Präsuppositionen und Habitus zeitgenössischer Leserschaft sowie dieFunktion seiner zahlreichen intertextuellen Anspielungen mit einbezieht. Diese Lesart erhellt »The Seasons« als einen, trotz heterogener Textoberfläche, in seiner kulturellen Funktionalität kohärenten Text. Die Analyse des Intertexts deckt Textstrategien auf, die den dichterischen Diskurs insbesondere in Relation zum neu privilegierten Diskurs der Naturphilosophie als kulturell relevante Kraft relegitimieren.

Harry Stout's groundbreaking study of preaching in colonial New England changed the field when it first appeared in 1986. Here, twenty-five years later, is a reissue of Stout's book: a reconstruction of the full import of the colonial sermon as a multi-faceted institution that served both religious and political purposes and explained history and society to the New England Puritans for one and a half centuries.

The Reading and Preaching of the Scriptures in the Worship of the Christian Church is a multivolume study by Hughes Oliphant Old that canvasses the history of preaching from the words of Moses at Mount Sinai through modern times. In Volume 1, The Biblical Period, Old begins his survey by discussing the roots of the Christian ministry of the Word in the worship of Israel. He then examines the preaching of Christ and the Apostles. Finally, Old looks at the development and practice of Christian preaching in the second and third centuries, concluding with the ministry of Origen.