Download Free The Case Of Lay Communion With The Church Of England Considered And The Lawfulness Of It Shewd From The Testimony Of Above An Hundred Eminent Non Conformists Of Several Perswasions Published For The Satisfaction Of The Scrupulous And To Prevent The Sufferings Which Such Needlesly Expose Themselves To Book in PDF and EPUB Free Download. You can read online The Case Of Lay Communion With The Church Of England Considered And The Lawfulness Of It Shewd From The Testimony Of Above An Hundred Eminent Non Conformists Of Several Perswasions Published For The Satisfaction Of The Scrupulous And To Prevent The Sufferings Which Such Needlesly Expose Themselves To and write the review.

Why were so many religious images and objects broken and damaged in the course of the Reformation? Margaret Aston's magisterial new book charts the conflicting imperatives of destruction and rebuilding throughout the English Reformation from the desecration of images, rails and screens to bells, organs and stained glass windows. She explores the motivations of those who smashed images of the crucifixion in stained glass windows and who pulled down crosses and defaced symbols of the Trinity. She shows that destruction was part of a methodology of religious revolution designed to change people as well as places and to forge in the long term new generations of new believers. Beyond blanked walls and whited windows were beliefs and minds impregnated by new modes of religious learning. Idol-breaking with its emphasis on the treacheries of images fundamentally transformed not only Anglican ways of worship but also of seeing, hearing and remembering.
As a leader of religious thought in England, Richard Baxter (1615–1691) was deeply concerned about the state of the church, and, in particular, about the condition of the ministry. During his years at Kidderminster, he attempted to draw contending parties together by an experiment in Christian unity—afterwards famous as the Worcestershire Association—from which similar movements arose in other English counties. This volume preserves the documents in connection with this movement. It is therefore a historical study. Yet it has a wider purpose. Baxter’s Reformed Pastor is a classical writing on the Christian ministry. IT belongs not only to the seventeenth century, but to every generation. In our present time, when in the ministry of all the churches there is a deep searching of heart amidst these difficult days, this book presents both a challenge and an appeal from the pen of this Puritan divine, who styled himself “catholic Christian.”
Evidence Unseen is the most accessible and careful though through response to most current attacks against the Christian worldview.
John Wyclif is known for translating the Vulgate Bible into English, and for arguing for the royal divestment of the church, the reduction of papal power and the elimination of the friars and against the doctrine of transubstantiation. His thought catalyzed the Lollard movement in England and provided an ideology for the Hussite revolution in Bohemia. Wyclif's Trialogus discusses divine power and knowledge, creation, virtues and vices, the Incarnation, redemption and the sacraments. It consists of a three-way conversation, which Wyclif wrote to familiarize priests and layfolk with the complex issues underlying Christian doctrine, and begins with formal philosophical theology, which moves into moral theology, concluding with a searing critique of the fourteenth-century ecclesiastical status quo. Stephen Lahey provides a complete English translation of all four books, and the 'Supplement to the Trialogue', which will be a valuable resource for scholars and students currently relying on selective translated extracts.
Shadow of the Third Century: A Revaluation of Christianity, first published in 1949, begins with the assertions that a true history of Christianity has never before been written and that the roots of the Christian religion lie in earlier religions and philosophies of the ancient world. The author, Alvin Boyd Kuhn, asserts that Christianity as we know it took the form it did due to a degeneration of knowledge rather than to an energization produced by a new release of light and truth into the world. In the ancient world, knowledge was commonly passed down by esoteric traditions, its inner meaning known only to the initiated. The Gospels, according to Kuhn, should therefore be understood as symbolic narratives rather than as history. Sacred scriptures are always written in a language of myth and symbol, and the Christian religion threw away and lost their true meaning when it mistranslated this language into alleged history instead of reading it as spiritual allegory. This literalism necessarily led to a religion antagonistic toward philosophy. Moreover, it produced a religion that failed to recognize its continuity with, and debt to, earlier esoteric schools. As evidence of this, Kuhn finds that many of the gospel stories and sayings have parallels in earlier works, in particular those of Egypt and Greece. The transformation of Jesus’ followers into Pauline Christians drew on these sources. Moreover, the misunderstanding of true Christianity led to the excesses of misguided asceticism. Overall, the book seeks to serve as a “clarion call to the modern world to return to the primitive Christianity which the founder of Christian theology, Augustine, proclaimed had been the true religion of all humanity.” With its many citations from earlier works, Shadow of the Third Century also serves as a bibliographic introduction to alternative histories of Christianity.