This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1842 edition. Excerpt: ...comfortable, and the law fearful. Fear maketh a. man many times to fly from ill, but love maketh him willingly to do good. Salomon saith, "Love is as strong as death: " for as all things yield unto death, so nothing is too hard or painful for him that loveth, but he will adventure at all perils, until he get the thing that he loveth. St Paul saith, " Who shall separate us from the love of Christ Jesus? Shall trouble, anguish, persecution, hunger, nakedness, jeopardy, or the sword?" If thou wouldst have a man earnest in any thing, rather draw him to it by love, than drive him to it by fear: bring him once to love it earnestly, and nothing shall make him afraid to stand to it manfully. Fear maketh men cold, discourageth them, and many times turneth them to hatred. That preacher therefore, which will win most unto God, shall rather do it by gentleness than by sharpness, by promise than by threatenings, by the gospel than by the law, by love than by fear: though the law must be interlaced to throw down the malice of man's heart; the flesh must be bridled by fear, and the spirit comforted with loving kindness promised. Nehemiah useth both the law and the gospel to persuade them withal. The seventeenth verse layeth afore them the misery they were in, to live under heathen and strange princes, the pitiful sight of their broken wall, their gates burned, whereby they lived in continual danger of the enemy round about them to be spoiled and murdered: the shame was no less than the loss, that they could not repair and recover by their well-doing that their fathers lost; and they had dwelled so many years in it since king Cyrus gave them licence to go home again: all which were the heavy burdens and curse of the law. But...

A major contribution to Puritan scholarship, 'Puritans and Predestination' presents the first consistent and thorough historical analysis of a key Puritan theological concept - predestination. For almost two centuries prior to 1695, English religious and cultural life endured a period of great upheaval. Dewey Wallace illuminates this complex era by tracing patterns of religious thought that took root in early English Protestantism and by explaining their social, cultural, and ecclesiastical implications. 'Puritans and Predestination' concludes that the differences between Puritan and Anglican theology were often subtle and sometimes nonexistent. Central to Protestant theology was the doctrine of grace - the notion that salvation was a divine gift, a free gift to those who believed. Among the many elements that constituted the doctrine of grace, predestination was the foremost. Wallace believes that shifting attitudes toward and emphases on predestination serve as both a measure of the extent of theological unity and an index of theological change. Among the significant conclusions documented in the course of this study are the importance of the Bucerian order of salvation in the early English Reformation, the anachronistic character of reading sharp differences in outlook between Puritan and Anglican, and the centrality of the piety and theology of grace in Puritanism. Wallace also explores the radically innovative character of the Laudian and Arminian theology, the inroads of rationalistic moralism into theology by the middle of the seventeenth century, and the emergence among later Stuart Dissenters of an evangelical pietism prefiguring the religion of the awakenings. This book will be indispensable to those interested in Puritanism and the theology of the Church of England.