Lingering Reluctance among Reformed Englishmen

Chapter 6 looks at the perseverance debate started by the avowed Arminian John Goodwin, who appealed to Augustine and the early church for a denial of the perseverance of the saints. The chapter focuses on the Reformed responses among Goodwin’s Puritan counterparts, like John Owen and George Kendall, and how they challenged Goodwin’s reading of Augustine and defended the importance of perseverance for confessing the Reformed faith. It also focuses on Richard Baxter’s alternate perspective, which affirmed the doctrine of the perseverance of the saints but questioned whether it should be a confessional issue based on his reading of Augustine and the witness of church history. This chapter reveals how competing readings of Augustine on perseverance persisted among Reformed Englishmen and also how these readings influenced the way Puritans developed and used confessions so as to handle concerns of catholicity.