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Reprint of the original, first published in 1881.
Drawing on hitherto unexamined manuscripts, this book challenges the standard narrative that English presbyterianism was successfully extinguished from the late sixteenth century until its prominent public resurgence during the English Civil War.
During the eighteenth century Presbyterians of the Middle Colonies were separated by divergent allegiances, mostly associated with groups migrating from New England with an English Puritan background and from northern Ireland with a Scotch-lrish tradition. Those differences led first to a fiery ordeal of ecclesiastical controversy and then to a spiritual awakening and a blending of diversity into a new order, American Presbyterianism. Several men stand out not only for having been tested by this ordeal but also for having made real contributions to the new order that arose from the controversy. The most important of these was Jonathan Dickinson. Bryan Le Beau has written the first book on Dickinson, whom historians have called "the most powerful mind in his generation of American divines." One of the founders of the College of New Jersey (now Princeton University) and its first president, Dickinson was a central figure during the First Great Awakening and one of the leading lights of colonial religious life. Le Beau examines Dickinson's writings and actions, showing him to have been a driving force in forming the American Presbyterian Church, accommodating diverse traditions in the early church, and resolving the classic dilemma of American religious history—the simultaneous longing for freedom of conscience and the need for order. This account of Dickinson's life and writings provides a rare window into a time of intense turmoil and creativity in American religious history.
Originally published in 1988, this was the first full and scholarly account of the formal Elizabethan and Jacobean debates between Presbyterians and conformists concerning the government of the church. This book shed new light on the crucial disagreements between puritans and conformists and the importance of these divisions for political processes within both the church and wider society. The originality and complexity of Richard Hooker’s thought is discussed and the extent to which Hooker redefined the essence of English Protestantism. The book will be of interest to historians of the late 16th and 17th Centuries and to those interested in church history and the development of Protestantism.
Edwin Rian left his doctoral studies in German to help found Westminster Seminary where he served as President of the Board of Trustees. The Presbyterian Conflict was the first historical account written of the struggle over doctrinal and ecclesiastical orthodoxy at Princeton Seminary in the early twentieth Century, culminating in the decision of many of its conservative faculty to resign and form a new seminary. It remains distinctly helpful and informative as a firsthand account of the man at its center, J. Gresham Machen.
Nathaniel Taylor was arguably the most influential and the most frequently misrepresented American theologian of his generation. While he claimed to be an Edwardsian Calvinist, very few people believed him. This book attempts to understand how Taylor and his associates could have counted themselves Edwardsians. In the process, it explores what it meant to be an Edwardsian minister and intellectual in the 19th century.
Beginning with the first colonists and continuing down to the present, the dominant narrative of New England Puritanism has maintained that piety and prosperity were enemies, that the rise of commerce delivered a mortal blow to the fervor of the founders, and that later generations of Puritans fell away from their religious heritage as they moved out across the New England landscape. This book offers a new alternative to the prevailing narrative, which has been frequently criticized but heretofore never adequately replaced. The author’s argument follows two main strands. First, he shows that commercial development, rather than being detrimental to religion, was necessary to sustain Puritan religious culture. It was costly to establish and maintain a vital Puritan church, for the needs were many, including educated ministers who commanded substantial salaries; public education so that the laity could be immersed in the Bible and devotional literature (substantial expenses in themselves); the building of meeting houses; and the furnishing of communion tables--all and more were required for the maintenance of Puritan piety. Second, the author analyzes how the Puritans gradually developed the evangelical impulse to broadcast the seeds of grace as widely as possible. The spread of Puritan churches throughout most of New England was fostered by the steady devotion of material resources to the maintenance of an intense and demanding religion, a devotion made possible by the belief that money sown to the spirit would reap divine rewards. In 1651, about 20,000 English colonists were settled in some 30 New England towns, each with a newly formed Puritan church. A century later, the population had grown to 350,000, and there were 500 meetinghouses for Puritan churches. This book tells the story of this remarkable century of growth and adaptation through intertwined histories of two Massachusetts churches, one in Boston and one in Westfield, a village on the remote western frontier, from their foundings in the 1660’s to the religious revivals of the 1740’s. In conclusion, the author argues that the Great Awakening was a product of the continuous cultivation of traditional religion, a cultural achievement built on New England’s economic development, rather than an indictment and rejection of its Puritan heritage.