John Cottons Doctrine Of Salvation In The Antinomian Controversy Of New England 1636 1638

The Antinomian controversy--a seventeenth-century theological crisis concerning salvation--was the first great intellectual crisis in the settlement of New England. Transcending the theological questions from which it arose, this symbolic controversy became a conflict between power and freedom of conscience. David D. Hall's thorough documentary history of this episode sheds important light on religion, society, and gender in early American history. This new edition of the 1968 volume, published now for the first time in paperback, includes an expanding bibliography and a new preface, treating in more detail the prime figures of Anne Hutchinson and her chief clerical supporter, John Cotton. Among the documents gathered here are transcripts of Anne Hutchinson's trial, several of Cotton's writings defending the Antinomian position, and John Winthrop's account of the controversy. Hall's increased focus on Hutchinson reveals the harshness and excesses with which the New England ministry tried to discredit her and reaffirms her place of prime importance in the history of American women.

A study of Antinomianism, with particular emphasis on the case of Anne Hutchinson.

In an examination of transatlantic Puritanism from 1570 to 1638, Theodore Dwight Bozeman analyzes the quest for purity through sanctification. The word "Puritan," he says, accurately depicts a major and often obsessive trait of the English late Reformatio

Making Heretics is a major new narrative of the famous Massachusetts disputes of the late 1630s misleadingly labeled the "antinomian controversy" by later historians. Drawing on an unprecedented range of sources, Michael Winship fundamentally recasts these interlocked religious and political struggles as a complex ongoing interaction of personalities and personal agendas and as a succession of short-term events with cumulative results. Previously neglected figures like Sir Henry Vane and John Wheelwright assume leading roles in the processes that nearly ended Massachusetts, while more familiar "hot Protestants" like John Cotton and Anne Hutchinson are relocated in larger frameworks. The book features a striking portrayal of the minister Thomas Shepard as an angry heresy-hunting militant, helping to set the volatile terms on which the disputes were conducted and keeping the flames of contention stoked even as he ostensibly attempted to quell them. The first book-length treatment in forty years, Making Heretics locates its story in rich contexts, ranging from ministerial quarrels and negotiations over fine but bitterly contested theological points to the shadowy worlds of orthodox and unorthodox lay piety, and from the transatlantic struggles over the Massachusetts Bay Company's charter to the fraught apocalyptic geopolitics of the Reformation itself. An object study in the ways that puritanism generated, managed, and failed to manage diversity, Making Heretics carries its account on into England in the 1640s and 1650s and helps explain the differing fortunes of puritanism in the Old and New Worlds.

The sermon as crafted by the early New England preachers was the most prominent literary form of its day, yet the earliest Puritan texts have as a rule been available only in rare-book collections. This anthology of sermons of the first generation of preachers fills a serious gap in American literature. The preachers collected here, the most widely published of their time, were among the eighty or more who emigrated to Massachusetts Bay during the 1630s. They are John Cotton of Boston, Thomas Shepard of Cambridge, and Thomas Hooker of Hartford, the three foremost "lights of the western churches," and two eminent colleagues, Peter Bulkeley of Concord and John Davenport, first of New Haven and later of Boston. The selections are chosen to be representative of the lengthy works from which they are drawn, to reflect the major concerns and styles of the preachers' work as a whole, and to demonstrate the genre of the sermon as developed by the early American Puritans. Not only does this anthology represent an important contribution to literary history, but the sermons also illustrate a doctrine uniquely elaborated in this period—a consistent and emphatic narrative, mythlike in its repetition and heroics, of the progress of the soul from a state of nature to a state of salvation. This theme may be seen as a three-stage-development, although individual sermons may vary. These stages—preparation, vocation, and regeneration—determine the order of the selections. The editors' introductory material supplies a comprehensive and thorough discussion of the early New England sermons, concentrating on their role, history, structure, style, and subject matter. A separate essay on the texts of the sermons describes the relationship between the early printed versions and their form as delivered in the pulpit. The introduction preceding each selection presents original research on the historical circumstances of the preaching and publication of the work from which the sermon is drawn. The editors have also provided brief biographies of the preacfiers represented here, an annotated list of recommended background reading, and the most exhaustive checklist available of authoritative editions of the sermons of these five preachers. This book will be useful to colonial specialists as well as to students of early American literature, religion, and history. The texts are critically edited for readability, with modernized spelling and annotations of unfamiliar phrases and allusions.

Harvard has often been referred to as "godless Harvard." This is far from the truth. Fact is that Harvard is and always has been concerned about religion. This volume addresses the reasons for this. The story of religion at Harvard in many ways is the story of religion in the United States. This edition will clarify this relationship. Furthermore, the question of religion is central not only to the religious history of Harvard but to its very corporate structure and institutional evolution. The volume is divided into three parts and deals withthe Formation of Harvard College in 1636 and Evolution of a Republic of Letters in Cambridge ("First Light", Chapters 1–5); Religion in the University, the Foundations of a Learned Ministry and the Development of the Divinity School (The "Augustan Age", Chapters 6–9); and the Contours of Religion and Commitment in an Age of Upheaval and Globalization ("Calm Rising Through Change and Through Storm", Chapters 10–12).The story of the central role played by religion in the development of Harvard is a neglected factor in Harvard's history only touched upon in a most cursory fashion by previous publications. For the first time George H. Williamstells that story as embedded in American culture and subject to intense and continuing academic study throughout the history of the University to this day.Replete with extensive footnotes, this edition will be a treasure to future historians, persons interested in religious history and in the development of theology, at first clearly Reformed and Protestant, later ecumenical and interfaith.

Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758) was a preacher, theologian, and missionary to the Native Americans. This book deals with Jonathan Edwards' doctrine of justification and its continuity with Reformed tradition. In his Reformed Theology, Edwards interprets the doctrine with scholastic as well as forensic terms such as "disposition," "habit," and "fitness." Due to his use of these concepts, some scholars suspect that he had a quasi-Roman Catholic view of salvation. According to them, Edwards' use of the terms indicates the intrinsic renovation or inherent righteousness of a saint. Contrary to this suspicion, Jonathan Edwards on Justification demonstrates that Edwards stands firmly on the Reformed tradition in the doctrine of justification. In this book, Hyun-Jin Cho presents a historical study on the theological connection between Edwards and his Reformed forebears. Based on Edwards' dispositional ontology, the concept of "dispositional transformation" with the Holy Spirit becomes an important theoretical foundation of his doctrine of justification. Cho discusses Edwards' attempts to explain his doctrine of justification in terms of disposition and its effects.

More than an ecclesiastical or political history, this book is a vivid description of the earliest American immigrant experience. It depicts the dramatic tale of the seventeenth-century newcomers to our shores as they were drawn and pushed to make their way in an unsettled and unsettling world.

Reexamining religious culture in seventeenth-century New England, Janice Knight discovers a contest of rival factions within the Puritan orthodoxy. Arguing that two distinctive strains of Puritan piety emerged in England prior to the migration to America, Knight describes a split between rationalism and mysticism, between theologies based on God's command and on God's love. A strong countervoice, expressed by such American divines as John Cotton, John Davenport, and John Norton and the Englishmen Richard Sibbes and John Preston, articulated a theology rooted in Divine Benevolence rather than Almighty Power, substituting free testament for conditional covenant to describe God's relationship to human beings. Knight argues that the terms and content of orthodoxy itself were hotly contested in New England and that the dominance of rationalist preachers like Thomas Hooker and Peter Bulkeley has been overestimated by scholars. Establishing the English origins of the differences, Knight rereads the controversies of New England's first decades as proof of a continuing conflict between the two religious ideologies. The Antinomian Controversy provides the focus for a new understanding of the volatile processes whereby orthodoxies are produced and contested. This book gives voice to this alternative piety within what is usually read as the univocal orthodoxy of New England, and shows the political, social, and literary implications of those differences.