5. Self-Denial, Monasticism, and The Pilgrim’s Progress

2020 ◽  
pp. 122-144
Keyword(s):  
Author(s):  
Isabel Rivers

This chapter analyses the editions, abridgements, and recommendations of texts by seventeenth-century nonconformists that were made by eighteenth-century dissenters, Methodists, and Church of England evangelicals. The nonconformist writers they chose include Joseph Alleine, Richard Baxter, John Flavel, John Owen, and John Bunyan. The editors and recommenders include Philip Doddridge, John Wesley, Edward Williams, Benjamin Fawcett, George Burder, John Newton, William Mason, and Thomas Scott. Detailed accounts are provided of the large number of Baxter’s works that were edited, notably A Call to the Unconverted and The Saints Everlasting Rest, and a case study is devoted to the many annotated editions of Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress and the ways in which they were used. The editors took into account length, intelligibility, religious attitudes, and cost, and sometimes criticized their rivals’ versions on theological grounds.


Author(s):  
Isabel Rivers

The Introduction summarizes the aims and methods of the book, explains the title, taken from Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, addresses the paradox of the otherworldly aims of religion and the worldly means of book publication, lists the principal questions the book sets out to answer and the denominations and groups covered, and points out the varied meanings of the terms ‘Methodist’ and ‘evangelical’. Despite the theological and organizational differences between these denominations and groups, they agreed on the fundamental importance of disseminating books for inculcating Christian belief and practice. To illustrate the long-term influence of such publications there is a brief analysis of Collins’s nineteenth-century series, ‘Select Christian Authors, with Introductory Essays’.


Author(s):  
Mark Wilson

Influenced by Quine, self-styled naturalist projects within the philosophy of mathematics rest upon simplistic conceptions of linguistic reference and how the inferential tools of applied mathematics help us reach empirical conclusions. In truth, these two forms of descriptive enterprise must work together in a considerably more entangled manner than is generally presumed. In particular, the vital contributions of set theory to descriptive success within science have been poorly conceptualized. This essay explores how a less onerous “naturalism” can be conceived on this corrected basis. A useful distinction between “mathematical optimism” and “mathematical opportunism” is introduced, which draws our attention to some open questions with respect to the concrete representational capacities of applied mathematics.


1907 ◽  
Vol 18 (9) ◽  
pp. 414-418
Author(s):  
John Kelman
Keyword(s):  

The Library ◽  
1941 ◽  
Vol s4-XXII (1) ◽  
pp. 73-81 ◽  
Author(s):  
FRANK MOTT HARRISON
Keyword(s):  

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