Shapers of English Calvinism, 1660-1714

Shapers of English Calvinism, 1660-1714

Author: Dewey D. Wallace

Publisher: OUP USA

Published: 2011-05-30

Total Pages: 369

ISBN-13: 0199744831

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Dewey Wallace tells the story of several prominent English Calvinist actors and thinkers in the first generations after the beginning of the Restoration, illuminating the religious and intellectual history of the era between the Reformation and modernity.


The Crisis of Calvinism in Revolutionary England, 1640-1660

The Crisis of Calvinism in Revolutionary England, 1640-1660

Author: Andrew Ollerton

Publisher: Boydell & Brewer

Published: 2023-05-16

Total Pages: 277

ISBN-13: 1783277734

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This book investigates a puzzling and neglected phenomenon - the rise of English Arminianism during the decade of puritan rule. Throughout the 1650s, numerous publications, from scholarly folios to popular pamphlets, attacked the doctrinal commitments of Reformed Orthodoxy. This anti-Calvinist onslaught came from different directions: episcopalian royalists (Henry Hammond, Herbert Thorndike, Peter Heylyn), radical puritan defenders of the regicide (John Goodwin and John Milton), and sectarian Quakers and General Baptists. Unprecedented rejection of Calvinist soteriology was often coupled with increased engagement with Catholic, Lutheran and Remonstrant alternatives. As a result, sophisticated Arminian publications emerged on a scale that far exceeded the Laudian era. Cromwellian England therefore witnessed an episode of religious debate that significantly altered the doctrinal consensus of the Church of England for the remainder of the seventeenth century. The book will appeal to historians interested in the contested nature of 'Anglicanism' and theologians interested in Protestant debates regarding sovereignty and free will. Part One is a work of religious history, which charts the rise of English Arminianism across different ecclesial camps - episcopal, puritan and sectarian. These chapters not only introduce the main protagonists but also highlight a surprising range of distinctly English Arminian formulations. Part Two is a work of historical theology, which traces the detailed doctrinal formulations of two prominent divines - the puritan John Goodwin and the episcopalian Henry Hammond. Their Arminian theologies are set in the context of the Western theological tradition and the soteriological debates, that followed the Synod of Dort. The book therefore integrates historical and theological enquiry to offer a new perspective on the crisis of 'Calvinism' in post-Reformation England.


Calvinist Conformity in Post-Reformation England

Calvinist Conformity in Post-Reformation England

Author: Greg A. Salazar

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2022

Total Pages: 305

ISBN-13: 0197536905

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Calvinist Conformity in Post-Reformation England is the first modern full-scale examination of the theology and life of the distinguished English Calvinist clergyman Daniel Featley (1582-1645). It explores Featley's career and thought through a comprehensive treatment of his two dozen published works and manuscripts and situates these works within their original historical context. A fascinating figure, Featley was the youngest of the translators behind the Authorized Version, a protégé of John Rainolds, a domestic chaplain for Archbishop George Abbot, and a minister of two churches. As a result of his sympathies with royalism and episcopacy, he endured two separate attacks on his life. Despite this, Featley was the only royalist Episcopalian figure who accepted his invitation to the Westminster Assembly. Three months into the Assembly, however, Featley was charged with being a royalist spy, was imprisoned by Parliament, and died shortly thereafter. While Featley is a central focus of the work, this study is more than a biography. It uses Featley's career to trace the fortunes of Calvinist conformists--those English Calvinists who were committed to the established Church and represented the Church's majority position between 1560 and the mid-1620s, before being marginalized by Laudians in the 1630s and puritans in the 1640s. It demonstrates how Featley's convictions were representative of the ideals and career of conformist Calvinism, explores the broader priorities and political maneuvers of English Calvinist conformists, and offers a more nuanced perspective on the priorities and political maneuvers of these figures and the politics of religion in post-Reformation England.


Edwards the Exegete

Edwards the Exegete

Author: Douglas A. Sweeney

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2017

Total Pages: 407

ISBN-13: 0190687495

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Scholars have long recognized that Jonathan Edwards loved the Bible. But preoccupation with his role in Western "public" life and letters has resulted in a failure to see the significance of his biblical exegesis. Douglas A. Sweeney offers the first comprehensive history of Edwards' interpretation of the Bible.


John Owen and English Puritanism

John Owen and English Puritanism

Author: Crawford Gribben

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2017-11

Total Pages: 425

ISBN-13: 0190860790

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

John Owen was a leading theologian in 17th-century England. Through his association with Oliver Cromwell in particular, he exercised considerable influence on central government, and became the premier religious statesman of the Interregnum.


Cotton Mather, Jonathan Edwards, and the Quest for Evangelical Enlightenment

Cotton Mather, Jonathan Edwards, and the Quest for Evangelical Enlightenment

Author: Ryan P. Hoselton

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2024-01-29

Total Pages: 307

ISBN-13: 3031449355

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This book explores the early evangelical quest for enlightenment by the Spirit and the Word. While the pursuit originated in the Protestant Reformation, it assumed new forms in the long eighteenth-century context of the early Enlightenment and transatlantic awakened Protestant reform. This work illuminates these transformations by focusing on the dynamic intersection of experimental philosophy and experimental religion in the biblical practices of early America’s most influential Protestant theologians, Cotton Mather (1663-1728) and Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758). As the first book-length project to treat Mather and Edwards together, this study makes an important contribution to the extensive scholarship on these figures, opening new perspectives on the continuities and complexities of colonial New England religion. It also provides new insights and interpretive interventions concerning the history of the Bible, early modern intellectual history, and evangelicalism’s complex relationship to the Enlightenment.


The Religious Innatism Debate in Early Modern Britain

The Religious Innatism Debate in Early Modern Britain

Author: R.J.W. Mills

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2021-09-20

Total Pages: 137

ISBN-13: 3030843238

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This book demonstrates that the common belief that humanity is naturally disposed to religion did not disappear with the emergence of the Enlightenment. Going beyond a narrow focus on John Locke’s empiricism, this vivid analysis reconstructs the vociferous, multivocal debate over the natural origins of religious belief in England and Scotland between c. 1650 and c. 1750. It enriches our understanding through examining hundreds of discussions of the relationship between human nature and religion, from a variety of genres and contexts. It shows that belief in religious innatism was a ubiquitous and enduring claim about human nature across the continuum of Christian thought in early modern Britain, and one deployed for a variety of reasons. While the doctrine of innate religious ideas did fall out of use, the belief that human nature was framed for religion continued in new forms into the eighteenth century.


Ramism and the Reformation of Method

Ramism and the Reformation of Method

Author: Simon J. G. Burton

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2024

Total Pages: 441

ISBN-13: 0197516351

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Ramism and the Reformation of Method explores the popular early modern movement of Ramism and its ambitious attempt to transform Church and society. It considers the relation of Ramism to Reformed Christianity and its development as a divine logic attuned to understanding both Scripture and the world. In doing so, it reveals how Ramists rejected the notion of a philosophy or worldview independent of God and sought to encompass everything under an overarching Christian philosophy indebted to Franciscan ideals. The supreme goal of the Ramists was the remaking of the world in the image of the Triune God.


John Wesley, Practical Divinity and the Defence of Literature

John Wesley, Practical Divinity and the Defence of Literature

Author: Emma Salgård Cunha

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2017-12-12

Total Pages: 215

ISBN-13: 1351395963

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

John Wesley (1703–1791), leader of British Methodism, was one of the most prolific literary figures of the eighteenth century, responsible for creating and disseminating a massive corpus of religious literature and for instigating a sophisticated programme of reading, writing and publishing within his Methodist Societies. John Wesley, Practical Divinity and the Defence of Literature takes the influential genre of practical divinity as a framework for understanding Wesley’s role as an author, editor and critic of popular religious writing. It asks why he advocated the literary arts as a valid aspect of his evangelical theology, and how his Christian poetics impacted upon the religious experience of his followers.


Hot Protestants

Hot Protestants

Author: Michael P. Winship

Publisher: Yale University Press

Published: 2019-02-26

Total Pages: 478

ISBN-13: 0300244797

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

“The rise and fall of transatlantic puritanism is told through political, theological, and personal conflict in this exceptional history.” (Publishers Weekly, starred review) Begun in the mid-sixteenth century by Protestant nonconformists keen to reform England’s church and society while saving their own souls, the puritan movement was a major catalyst in the great cultural changes that transformed the early modern world. Providing a uniquely broad transatlantic perspective, this groundbreaking volume traces puritanism’s tumultuous history from its initial attempts to reshape the Church of England to its establishment of godly republics in both England and America and its demise at the end of the seventeenth century. Shedding new light on puritans whose impact was far-reaching as well as on those who left only limited traces behind them, Michael Winship delineates puritanism’s triumphs and tribulations and shows how the puritan project of creating reformed churches working closely with intolerant godly governments evolved and broke down over time in response to changing geographical, political, and religious exigencies. “Among the fairest and most readable accounts of the glorious failure that was trans-Atlantic Puritanism.” --The Wall Street Journal “Exhilarating popular history . . . convincingly captures in one bold retelling decades of scholarship on Puritanism’s origins, developments and characteristics” —Times Literary Supplement “Winship has established himself as a leading authority on the history of the Puritans. While many works have focused on a specific aspect of Puritan history, . . . there are fewer works that show Puritanism as a multinational movement in Europe and the Americas. This book fills those gaps.” —Library Journal A Choice Outstanding Academic Titles