The Age of the Puritans Volume 1

This volume of The Age of the Puritans begins with William Perkin’s concise summary of Christian doctrine written in response to popular misconceptions of the time and Robert Rollock’s scheme for logically dividing doctrine into key topics. Rollock then explains the relationship between the written Scriptures and what he terms the “lively voice” heard in other ages, pre-empting what would later become the Quaker-Puritan debates. B.B. Warfield gives a ‘best of’ John Arrowsmith’s Armilla Catechetica (two of Arrowsmith’s sermons to the English parliament during the First English Civil War appear at the end of this collection). William Perkins illuminates the book of 1 John by arranging it as a dialogue between the church and John with Perkins supplying the questions to which John is responding. This is followed by Stephen Charnock’s and John Bunyan’s dying aphorisms. William Ames (the Quaker, not to be confused with the theologian of the same name who died 30 years earlier) gives a general exhortation to “The Friends of Truth”, the name used by the Quakers for themselves. William Perkins writes a treatise on faith. Protestant John Owen finally weighs in on the question of the permissibility of remarriage after a case of divorce. (Summary by InTheDesert) Other volumes in this series: