Sermons, Separatists, and Succession Politics in Late Elizabethan England
Abstract In late 1599 the population of York was able to witness a fairly extraordinary sight. In York Castle, the Catholic prisoners of conscience, as they saw themselves (though others regarded them as dangerous political dissidents), were being compelled to listen, once a week, to a Protestant sermon. These sermons were preached at them by a slate of godly ministers. This exercise was something the prisoners actively contested by murmuring, blocking their ears, shouting, and attempting to rush out of the hall. The prisoners' antics provoked the authorities into increasingly coercive measures to make them hear the Word of God. This outwardly rather ridiculous and unseemly charade went on, week after week, for nearly a year, at which point the whole business was abandoned by the lord president, Lord Burghley, as a waste of time. However, by decoding the extant manuscript narrative that we have of the sermon series and by looking at who was involved in this business and why, and what political messages were being sent during the course of it, we can say something about the popular politics of late Elizabethan England. In particular, we can comment on the strategies adopted by those who were anticipating the moment, surely not far off, when Tudor power would be extinguished and Elizabeth's crown would pass to her successor.
The ‘True and Zealouse Seruice of God’: Robert Parsons. Edmund Bunny, and The First Booke of the Christian Exercise
It appeareth (I saye) what an exacte lyfe the trew lyfe of a Christian is: which is a continuall resistance of all sinne, bothe in thought, word and deede, and a performance or exercise of all good woorkes, that possiblie he can deuise to doe. God requireth at our handes, that we should make his lawes and preceptes our studie and cogitations: that we should think of them continuallie, & meditate vpon them bothe day and night, at home and abrode, early & late, when we go to bedde, and when we rise in the morning: this is his commaudement, & there is no dispensation therin.
God's Caress: The Psychology of Puritan Religious Experience
Although scripture demands rebirth for all of God's chosen people, the actual experience of religious conversion is largely determined by the complex interaction between individuals and clergy. This book focuses on the Puritan experience of conversion, which culminated in the celebration of strength liberated for divine purposes, to examine how ministers elaborated the psychological imperatives of faith and their listeners modified and internalized them. Looking at firsthand accounts of personal conversion as well as at sermons and tracts, Cohen discusses how clergy and laity together defined the norms of religious experience, how the Bible influenced Puritan self-perception, and how theology molded the behavior of Saints in a covenanted community. Winner of the Allan Nevins Prize of the Society of American Historians, this study advances Max Weber's discussion of the Saint's psychology of work and illuminated the function of rebirth in Puritan culture as both a religious and a psychological phenomenon.