A Soul Prepared for Heaven
A Soul Prepared for Heaven

Author: W. Britt Stokes

Publisher: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht

Published: 2022-06-13

Total Pages: 239

ISBN-13: 3647560693

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From his first publication of hymns in 1707, common knowledge regarding Isaac Watts (1674–1748) often revolves around his hymn-writing legacy. Though Watts legacy as a hymnographer is significant, he also functions as a key transitional figure between the English Puritans and the Evangelicals during eighteenth-century English dissent. As a pastor, theologian, philosopher, and literary mainstay of his era, Watts' influence grew well beyond his early work in hymnody to impact scores of Christians on both sides of the Atlantic. Watts' approach to Christian spirituality is an area of his thought thats been unexplored. This book provides the first ever analysis of Watts' theological vision for the Christian spiritual life. In emphasizing the experience of holiness and happiness, Watts leans heavily upon his Reformed theological heritage to underscore how knowing and loving God are central to God's preparation of the soul for heaven.

Religion, Reform and Modernity in the Eighteenth Century
Religion, Reform and Modernity in the Eighteenth Century

Author: Robert G. Ingram

Publisher: Boydell Press

Published: 2007

Total Pages: 346

ISBN-13: 9781843833482

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A new interpretation of English history and religion in the eighteenth century. The eighteenth century has long divided critical opinion. Some contend that it witnessed the birth of the modern world, while others counter that England remained an ancien regime confessional state. This book takes issue with both positions, arguing that the former overstate the newness of the age and largely misdiagnose the causes of change, while the latter rightly point to the persistence of more traditional modes of thought and behaviour, but downplay the era's fundamental uncertainty and misplace the reasons for and the timeline of its passage. The overwhelming catalyst for change is here seen to be war, rather than long-term social and economic changes. Archbishop Thomas Secker [1693-1768], the Cranmer or Laud of his age, and the hitherto neglected church reforms he spearheaded, form the particular focus of the book; this is the first full archivally-based study of a crucial but frequently ignored figure. ROBERT G. INGRAM is Assistant Professor at the Department of History, Ohio University.

The poor in England 1700–1850
The poor in England 1700–1850

Author: Alannah Tomkins

Publisher: Manchester University Press

Published: 2018-07-30

Total Pages: 296

ISBN-13: 1526137860

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This electronic version has been made available under a Creative Commons (BY-NC-ND) open access license. This fascinating study investigates the experience of English poverty between 1700 and 1900 and the ways in which the poor made ends meet. The phrase ‘economy of makeshifts’ has often been used to summarise the patchy, desperate and sometimes failing strategies of the poor for material survival. In The poor of England some of the leading, young historians of welfare examine how advantages gained from access to common land, mobilisation of kinship support, resorting to crime, and other marginal resources could prop up struggling households. The essays attempt to explain how and when the poor secured access to these makeshifts and suggest how the balance of these strategies might change over time or be modified by gender, life-cycle and geography. This book represents the single most significant attempt in print to supply the English ‘economy of makeshifts’ with a solid, empirical basis and to advance the concept of makeshifts from a vague but convenient label to a more precise yet inclusive definition.

William Wordsworth and the Theology of Poverty
William Wordsworth and the Theology of Poverty

Author: Heidi J. Snow

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2016-02-17

Total Pages: 160

ISBN-13: 1134768133

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Exploring the relationship between poverty and religion in William Wordsworth’s poetry, Heidi J. Snow challenges the traditional view that the poet’s early years were primarily irreligious. She argues that this idea, based on the equation of Christianity with Anglicanism, discounts the richly varied theological landscape of Wordsworth’s youth. Reading Wordsworth’s poetry in the context of the diversity of theological views represented in his milieu, Snow shows that poems like The Excursion reject Anglican orthodoxy in favor of a meld of Quaker, Methodist, and deist theologies. Rather than support a narrative of Wordsworth’s life as a journey from atheism to orthodoxy or even from radicalism to conservatism, therefore, Wordsworth’s body of work consistently makes a case for a sensitive approach to the problem of the poor that relies on a multifaceted theological perspective. To reconstruct the religious context in which Wordsworth wrote in its complexity, Snow makes extensive use of the materials in the record offices of the Lake District and the religious sermons and congregational records for the orthodox Anglican, evangelical Anglican, Methodist, and Quaker congregations. Snow’s depiction of the multiple religious traditions in the Lake District complicates our understanding of Wordsworth’s theological influences and his views on the poor.