What was Paul's attitude toward his own death? How did he act and what did he say and write in view of it? What hopes did he hold for himself beyond death? Alexander N. Kirk explores these questions through a close reading of four Pauline letters that look ahead to Paul's death and other relevant texts in the first two generations after Paul's death (AD 70-160). The author studies portraits of the departed Paul in Acts, 1 Clement, the letters of Ignatius, Polycarp's letter To the Philippians, and the Martyrdom of Paul. He also examines portraits of the departing Paul in 1 and 2 Corinthians, Philippians, and 2 Timothy, arguing that Paul's death did not primarily present an existential challenge, but a pastoral one. Although touching upon several areas of recent scholarly interest, Alexander N. Kirk sets forth a new research question and fresh interpretations of early Christian and Pauline texts.

«In many ways», Robert J.C. Young writes, «colonization from the very first carried with it the seeds of its own destruction.» Imperial Affliction examines some ways in which Young's observation could be applied to problems of subjectivity and influence within the colonizing nations themselves, particularly eighteenth-century Britain. How might these «seeds of destruction» manifest themselves as problems of identity? How might the very selves with greatest access to self-affirmation - the idea of the empire, the idea of British citizenry, the idea of the British self - actually find themselves vulnerable, confused, or damaged? Using multiple forms of postcolonial critique, this book turns back to salient eighteenth-century British lives and work for a different kind of enlightenment. Among its central subjects are the elusive subjectivity of William Collins; the exilic religious experience of William Cowper and its multiple readings in the twentieth century by a self-fashioned exilic, Donald Davie; the «missed encounter» between Christopher Smart and Samuel Johnson, and the ways in which that problem was re-inscribed in the work of W. Jackson Bate and Lionel Trilling; the problem of imperial fixity in James Cook's journals with a view to Gray's «Elegy» and Goldsmith's «Deserted Village»; and the problem of purity as a paradoxically privileged and exilic force in the work of John Newton and Christopher Smart. In these explorations, this book illustrates both an expanded view of eighteenth-century colonial liabilities and a new emphasis on postcolonial critique as a means of exploring the fissures always present in imperial ambition.

In A Treatise on Afflictions, Thomas Case (1598–1682) generously applies a soothing salve to the wounds of God’s suffering saints. He begins by compassionately illustrating twenty lessons God teaches his children in affliction. He then proceeds to show the advantages wrought by affliction in the lives of languishing believers. He shows why deliverance from suffering should not necessarily be the believer’s primary goal when dark days come, and explains why suffering may sometimes seem to last longer than it should. The author shows from Scripture how affliction and instruction go hand-in-hand in the life of the child of God. This work rings true to the suffering reader because it was written while the author was imprisoned in the Tower of London alongside Thomas Watson, Christopher Love (who was beheaded), and others. Originally titled Correction, Instruction or The Rod and the Word, this classic treatise has been carefully prepared for the benefit of a new generation of Christian readers. It includes a biographical preface by James Reid, and has Scripture references from the English Standard Version (ESV®) embedded in the text as hyperlinks—no wireless connection is needed.