Assurance was a central issue for the eminent Scottish theologian-pastor Thomas Boston long before it emerged as a focal point of the theological debate in the Marrow Controversy. In The Marrow of Certainty, Chun Tse presents the first full-length study of Boston's theology of assurance in six dimensions: trinitarian, covenantal, Christological, soteriological, ecclesiastical, and sacramental. This work not only furnishes the first-ever intellectual biography of Boston in his Scottish context and controversies, but it also cross-studies the theology of the Marrow of Modern Divinity with Boston's notes. This research argues that Boston's doctrine of assurance centres on union and communion with Christ, the architectonic principle of his theology. The book challenges the common conception that Boston's theology merely follows Calvin, the Scots Confession, the Marrow, the Westminster Standards, and Scottish federalism. Boston, most strikingly, holds in tension assurance as intrinsic to faith—itself a gift from God's sovereignty in election—while insisting on self-examination as a human responsibility. This salient mark of his doctrine of assurance originates from his assertion that Christ died for the elect alone but all—elect or not—have the warrant to receive Christ. As such, assurance is, theologically, a divine gift and, pastorally, a human endeavour. Certainty is thus both extra nos and intra nos. Boston, this study reveals, has a potent and enduring power to speak on the perennial issue of assurance, rooted in the person of Christ, whom he considers as being the covenant itself.

Martyrs' Mirror examines the folklore of martyrdom among seventeenth-century New England Protestants, exploring how they imagined themselves within biblical and historical narratives of persecution. Memories of martyrdom, especially stories of the Protestants killed during the reign of Queen Mary in the mid-sixteenth century, were central to a model of holiness and political legitimacy. The colonists of early New England drew on this historical imagination in order to strengthen their authority in matters of religion during times of distress. By examining how the notions of persecution and martyrdom move in and out of the writing of the period, Adrian Chastain Weimer finds that the idea of the true church as a persecuted church infused colonial identity. Though contested, the martyrs formed a shared heritage, and fear of being labeled a persecutor, or even admiration for a cheerful sufferer, could serve to inspire religious tolerance. The sense of being persecuted also allowed colonists to avoid responsibility for aggression against Algonquian tribes. Surprisingly, those wishing to defend maltreated Christian Algonquians wrote their history as a continuation of the persecutions of the true church. This examination of the historical imagination of martyrdom contributes to our understanding of the meaning of suffering and holiness in English Protestant culture, of the significance of religious models to debates over political legitimacy, and of the cultural history of persecution and tolerance.

Does God really communicate his will to individuals, so that they receive infallible guidance in that sense which the ancient Greeks called enthusiasm? Both the Old Testament and the New maintain that the true prophets received direct advices from God, which, regardless of consequences, they were morally bound to communicate even to the skeptical among their contemporaries. The recent canonization of Joan of Arc is a fresh proof that the Catholics believe in the possibility of private revelations. Luther, Calvin and the English Reformers were hostile to those Anabaptists and others who alleged they were actually receiving new revelations; and early Massachusetts felt that the most dangerous of Anne Hutchinson's heresies was her claim to immediate inspiration; for the motions she followed might not be those of God but the Devil. Dr. Lee sketches the belief in direct inspiration from its Hebraic and Greek roots down to the time of the French Prophets who amazed London. Early Methodism arose in such an atmosphere. He has, therefore, examined the early records of the Methodist movement and gathered evidence from its friends and from its enemies to answer the question: How far did some of the early Methodists believe that they were directly moved by God?