American Missionary Motivation Before the Revolution

1962 ◽  
Vol 31 (2) ◽  
pp. 216-226 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. Pierce Beaver
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
New England ◽  
Roman Catholic ◽  
The Earth ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Protestant Missions ◽  
The Revolution

Sources for discovery of the missionary motivation of the Indian evangelists and their supporters in seventeenth century New England are scanty. Nevertheless, the most compelling factors come clearly to view. The avowed missionary intent of colonization, as voiced in the Plymouth and Massachusetts Charters, was not one of these. The directors of the colonial companies might have had the notion of serving God and checking Roman Catholic political expansion through Protestant missions, but such an aim was of little force in the thinking of the colonist and his children. They were, indeed, creating a Christian commonwealth. They were completing the Reformation also in a place at the end of the earth. It had to be wrested from the heathen who possessed it. But this extension of Christendom was by the displacement of the heathen, not by their conversion.

Historical and Ecclesiastical Contexts

2021 ◽  
pp. 32-50
Author(s):  
George Marsden
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
New England ◽  
Roman Catholic ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
The World ◽  
Colonial Government

This chapter sketches some of the webs of interrelated contexts that helped shape Edwards’s life and work. It surveys some of the background contexts growing out of the Reformation, Puritanism in England, and related political developments including the seventeenth-century political revolutions. Then it turns to the background of seventeenth-century Puritan New England including ecclesiastical and political developments that shaped the world Edwards was born into. Finally it looks at the major social, political, and ecclesiastical contexts shaping Edwards’s world during his years in eighteenth-century New England. That includes relations to Indians both in warfare and in missions, British wars with Roman Catholic powers, colonial politics and local colonial government, hierarchical social assumptions, slavery, church controversies, especially regarding the sacraments, and international and colonial pietism and awakenings.

Calvin, Witsius (1636–1708), and the English Antinomians

2011 ◽  
Vol 91 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 229-240 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gert van den Brink
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Human Activity ◽  
Roman Catholic ◽  
Defensive Strategy ◽  
Reformed Tradition ◽  
The Core ◽  
Investigative Tool ◽  
Good Works ◽  
The Reformation

At the core of the Reformation lies the belief that good works are excluded from man’s justification before God. Roman Catholic adversaries feared the rise of immorality and thus accused the Reformed of antinomianism. In this paper the term “doctrinal antinomians” is used for those who deny any human activity within the order of salvation. Within the Reformed tradition we do indeed find examples of such antinomians. As might be expected, they were highly criticised from within their own Reformed camp. However, as part of their defensive strategy they appealed to Calvin as one of their champions. This paper first investigates the manner in which the antinomians referred to him, and then goes on to consider whether their appeal is justified. In order to evaluate to what extent antinomian aspects can be detected in Calvin’s theology, the analysis of the antinomian position by Herman Witsius, a seventeenth-century Dutch theologian, will be used as an investigative tool.

scholarly journals The Attempts to Establish A Balance of Power in Europe During the Second Half of the Seventeenth Century (1648–1702)

1904 ◽  
Vol 18 ◽  
pp. 33-76
Author(s):  
M. G. Routh
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
Balance Of Power ◽  
Roman Catholic ◽  
The Other ◽  
Roman Catholic Church ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
The One

The Peace of Westphalia in 1648 put an end to the war which had troubled Europe for thirty years, and which had its origin in the bitter religious hatred, intensified by political jealousy, of the partisans of the Reformation on the one hand, and of the adherents of the Roman Catholic Church on the other.

Intra-Confessional Polemics in the Reformation

2019 ◽  
Vol 88 (3) ◽  
pp. 629-644 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ralph Keen
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Roman Catholic ◽  
Religious Thought ◽  
Mutual Antagonism ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Religious Polemic

Although religious polemic is typically understood and studied as a phenomenon of mutual antagonism across the confessions—Protestant against Catholic and Catholic against Protestant—the growth of the early modern polemic traditions was the product of heated internal controversy. In a series of theses intended to point to rhetorical aspects of conflicts within the Lutheran and Catholic confessions, this paper brings forward features of polemical writings from the disputes between Gnesio-Lutherans and Philippists in the wake of the Augsburg Interim of 1548 and those between and among Jesuits and Jansenists in the seventeenth century. Early modern religious thought, I suggest, cannot be understood without attention to the fissures within the Lutheran and Roman Catholic traditions.

Arminius and the Reformation

1961 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
pp. 155-170 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carl Bangs
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
New England ◽  
John Locke ◽  
Familiar Word ◽  
American Frontier ◽  
Hugo Grotius ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Reformation Theology ◽  
English Speaking ◽  
Anglican Theology

James Arminius (1560-1609) is not nearly as well-known as the various movements which bear his name. “Arminianism” is a familiar word in Protestant history and theology and a pervasive movement particularly in English-speaking Protestantism. The Arminian movements, however, because of their diversity do not point clearly to Arminius himself. The label of Arminianism has been applied to and often accepted by such diverse entities as the politics of William Laud, seventeenth century Anglican theology from high churchmanship to moderate Puritanism, the communal experiment at Little Gidding, the empiricism of John Locke, Latitudinarianism, the rational supernaturalism of Hugo Grotius and the early Remonstrants, early Unitarianism in England, Wales, and New England, the evangelicalism of the Wesleys, and the revivalism of the American frontier. In our time the term means for some the crowning of Reformation theology; for others it points merely to an anachronistic sub-species of fundamentalism; and for still others it means an easy-going American culture-Protestantism.

John Dury, Advocate of Christian Reunion

1932 ◽  
Vol 1 (4) ◽  
pp. 222-231 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. M. Batten
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Roman Catholic ◽  
Roman Catholicism ◽  
Wars Of Religion ◽  
Storm And Stress ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Differences Of Opinion ◽  
Theological Differences ◽  
The Church

Richard Baxter correctly described the seventeenth century as a “contentious, dividing Age”. Divisive tendencies had been dominant in the preceding century. But the Protestant leaders in the Age of the Reformation had generally maintained that there was but one universal church. Their protests against Roman Catholic abuses and the consequent counter-charges of a revived Roman Catholicism produced the cleavage of Western Christendom and broke the formal unity of the church. Despite the inevitable differences of opinion which emerged amid the storm and stress of the time, the Protestant leaders often expressed their interest in the promotion of the visible unity of the church and they shared a common hope for the ultimate establishment of a new catholicity expressed in terms of universal free communion in place of the old Catholicism under the headship of the pope. But tendencies which the reformers failed to curb soon produced a succession of divisions. The separatists from Rome showed a marked inclination to form separate communions which, at first, followed territorial and national lines. Due to territorial, national, personal, political, and theological differences, the lines of demarcation between the groups into which Christendom was being divided gradually became defined with more pronounced clearness. In the latter part of the sixteenth century new lines of cleavage appeared. The development of rigid types of Protestant scholasticism intensified the strife over confessional differences and the Wars of Religion increased the hatreds of the age.

Deposition of Ministers in the Church of Scotland Under the Covenanters, 1638–1651

1975 ◽  
Vol 44 (3) ◽  
pp. 321-335 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Stevenson
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
The State ◽  
Church Of Scotland ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Great Purges ◽  
The Right ◽  
Right Order ◽  
The Church ◽  
The Revolution

The period 1638–1651 saw the first major purges of the ministry of the reformed kirk in Scotland since the Reformation. These were the forerunners of the later great purges associated with the Restoration (of monarchy and episcopacy) in the 1660s and with the Revolution and re-establishment of presbyterianism in 1688–1690. Before 1638, for all the conflicts within the kirk and in its relations with the state, deposition of ministers had been rare. J. K. Hewison's estimate of 49 deprivations or depositions in 1560–1638 is probably too low, but is of the right order. No detailed study of depositions under the covenanters has ever been made. Hewison calculated that 138 ministers were deprived in the whole of the period 1638–1660. but this figure is far too low. More recentestimates (again covering 1638–1660) of about 200, and of about 210 depositions come much nearer the truth, but they also are too low; there were more depositions than this even in 1638–1651. Considering the importance attached to the depositions after 1660 and after 1688 as indicating the acceptability to ministers of the religious changes then introduced and the extent of persecution, it is rather surprising that so little attention has been paid to the predecessors of these purges— though James Bulloch's two useful local studies of depositions do cover the whole of the seventeenth century.

James I and the Huguenot Synod of Tonneins of 1614

1972 ◽  
Vol 65 (2) ◽  
pp. 241-270 ◽  
Author(s):  
W. Brown Patterson
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Roman Catholic ◽  
Classical Scholar ◽  
James I ◽  
Reformed Church ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Ecumenical Council ◽  
King James I ◽  
James I Of England

That King James I of England was ardently interested in religious ideas is well-known to students of the seventeenth century. Less well-known is the fact that he was specifically interested in the cause of religious reunion and played a leading part in a movement to find a way to reconcile the different national churches of his day and thus significantly to reduce international tensions. His plans did not exclude the possibility of a rapprochement between the Churches of the Reformation and Rome — even though James's own religious and political writings involved him in a series of bitter exchanges with leading Roman Catholic controversialists. From the beginning of his reign in England James had wanted to approach the problem of religious disunity through an international assembly of divines — or an ecumenical council, and he took care to make his intentions clear through diplomatic channels. During the years 1610–1614 he made use of the celebrated classical scholar Isaac Casaubon, then resident in England, in stimulating support for his ideas, especially in learned circles on the continent. Casaubon's death in England in the summer of 1614 deprived James of a zealous ally in the cause of Christian reunion, but it did not bring the campaign to which they had committed themselves to an end. By this time James was involved in the most ambitious reunion plan of his career, the result of his collaboration with Pierre Du Moulin, pastor of the Reformed Church in Paris and one of the leading theologians in France

Critics and Skeptics in the Seventeenth-Century Republic of Letters

1988 ◽  
Vol 81 (3) ◽  
pp. 271-296 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patrick J. Lambe
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Roman Catholic ◽  
Biblical Criticism ◽  
Republic Of Letters ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
History Of

The literature on the history of biblical criticism is voluminous, but remarkably consistent in its postulation of the Reformation and the Enlightenment as the two mainsprings of modern biblical criticism. That this history is written almost exclusively by heirs of the liberal Protestant tradition ought to sound a warning bell, especially since the extremely rare dissenting accounts of biblical criticism come from the Roman Catholic camp.

Who Dubbed It “The Glorious Revolution?”

1987 ◽  
Vol 19 (4) ◽  
pp. 579-585
Author(s):  
James R. Hertzler
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Roman Catholic ◽  
Glorious Revolution ◽  
English Revolution ◽  
House Of Lords ◽  
William Iii ◽  
The Glorious Revolution ◽  
Considerable Discussion ◽  
The Revolution

It was not very glorious at first, at least to many English people of the late seventeenth century. With a king of undoubted legitimacy squeezed out and a new, albeit related monarch installed and recognized by Parliament, the transaction shook government, nation and church alike. It left Jacobite and non-juring splinters all round. The Revolution, happening in fulfillment of ideals of exclusionist Whigs, did not entirely satisfy those partisans, who soon learned that they could not control their masterful king, William III. As for the Tories, their consciences ached due to their resistance to a divinely-appointed sovereign. Few highly-placed Englishmen were comfortable with their need to call in a foreigner to help them solve their domestic squabbles. Indeed, one writer, reflecting on the letter inviting the Prince of Orange to invade England, thought it would have been “more glorious … to assist our undoubted Soveraign [sic], then to suffer him to be dethroned, solely because he is a Roman Catholic.”Twentieth-century historians called the Revolution other names than “glorious.” It has been dubbed a “sensible,” a “model,” a “moral,” a “respectable,” a “palace,” and simply the English Revolution. All agreed that it was indeed a Revolution, and they themselves were in agreement with some early writers who were contemporary with the event. The Orange Gazette, at the very end of the year 1688, reported on “the Revolutions that had occurred.” The historian Nicholas Tindal wrote that William of Orange himself, in a speech before the House of Lords, spoke of “this late Revolution.” Considerable discussion ensued in Parliament and in pamphlets as to whether William conquered James, or whether the king had abdicated, or had deserted his kingdom. But little question with contemporaries: there was a Revolution.

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