James Ussher (1581-1656), one of the most important religious scholars and Protestant leaders of the seventeenth century, helped shape the Church of Ireland and solidify its national identity. In Catholicity and the Covenant of Works, Harrison Perkins addresses the development of Christian doctrine in the Reformed tradition, paying particular attention to the ways in which Ussher adopted various ideas from the broad Christian tradition to shape his doctrine of the covenant of works, which he utilized to explain how God related to humanity both before and after the fall into sin. Perkins highlights the ecumenical premises that underscored Reformed doctrine and the major role that Ussher played in codifying this doctrine, while also shedding light on the differing perspectives of the established churches of Ireland and England. Catholicity and the Covenant of Works considers how Ussher developed the doctrine of a covenant between God and Adam that was based on law, and illustrates how he related the covenant of works to the doctrines of predestination, Christology, and salvation.

Unity and Continuity in Covenantal Thought examines the historiographical problems related to the interpretation of the Westminster Standards, delving into the issue of covenantal thought in the Westminster Standards, followed by an exhaustive analysis of nineteenth- and twentieth-century scholarship on covenant.

In early modern England, boxes furnished minds as readily as they furnished rooms, shaping ideas about the challenges of interpretation, and negotiations of the book itself as text and material object. Engaging with recent work on material culture and the history of the book, Lucy Razzall weaves together close readings of texts and objects, from wills, plays, sermons and religious polemic, to chests, book-bindings, reliquaries and coffins. She demonstrates how the material and imaginative possibilities of the box were dynamically connected in post-Reformation England, structuring modes of thought. These early modern responses to materiality offer ways in which the discipline of book history might reframe its analysis of the material text. In tracing the early modern significance of the box as matter and metaphor, this book reveals the origins of some of the enduring habits of thought with which we still respond to people, texts and things.

There is a growing body of historical literature on the importance of John Owen. Ryan M. McGraw seeks to reassess Owen's theology in light of the way in which he connected his trinitarian piety to his views of public worship. McGraw argues that Owen ́s teaching on communion with God as triune was the foundation of his views of public worship and that he regarded public worship as the highest expression of communion with the triune God. These themes not only highlight Owen's context as a Reformed orthodox theologian, but the distinctive influence of English Puritanism on his theological emphases. The connection between his practical trinitarianism and public worship runs through the course of his writings and every major area of his theology. These include the nature of theology, the knowledge of God, the doctrine of the Trinity, public worship, spiritual affections, apostasy, covenant theology, ecclesiology, and Christology. This work treats these themes in Owen's thought and shows how they intersect and are intertwined with the Trinity and public worship. In addition, this book provides a detailed exposition of the parts of Reformed worship. While other works have treated the centrality of his trinitarianism in his theology, few have acknowledged the importance of public worship in his thinking. This research concludes that communion with God in public worship was integral to Owen's practical trinitarian theology.

This book examines the ways in which ideas about children, childhood and Ireland changed together in Irish Protestant writing of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It focuses on different varieties of the child found in the work of a range of Irish Protestant writers, theologians, philosophers, educationalists, politicians and parents from the early seventeenth century up to the outbreak of the 1798 Rebellion. The book is structured around a detailed examination of six ‘versions’ of the child: the evil child, the vulnerable/innocent child, the political child, the believing child, the enlightened child, and the freakish child. It traces these versions across a wide range of genres (fiction, sermons, political pamphlets, letters, educational treatises, histories, catechisms and children’s bibles), showing how concepts of childhood related to debates about Irish nationality, politics and history across these two centuries.