Jan Stievermann's pioneering study of Cotton Mather's Biblia Americana examines this Puritan scholar's engagement with the Hebrew Bible as Old Testament. The author focuses specifically on Mather's struggle to uphold or modify traditional typological and allegorical readings in the face of a growing awareness of the historicity of Scriptures. Other key issues include Mather's interventions in the contemporary debates over the legitimacy of Christian interpretations of the prophets, as well as over the authorship, provenance, genre, and spiritual import of texts such as Ecclesiastes and Canticles. Stievermann's book yields fascinating insights into an underappreciated phase of exegesis that was at once traditionalist and innovative, apologetically oriented, pious, and open to new modes of historical-textual criticism. Moreover, it shows how Mather's biblical exegesis fits into the broader development of Puritan theology and identity. --

A model edition of the early correspondence of one of George III's favourite bishops. ARCHIVES Richard Hurd is best known to ecclesiastical historians as one of George III's favourite bishops who was offered, and declined, the archbishopric of Canterbury. These letters, therefore, illuminate the early career of one of the most prominent clerics of the late eighteenth century. The letters begin in 1739, just after Hurd had graduated B.A. at Emmanuel College, Cambridge. They chart his gradual climb up the ladder of ecclesiastical preferment, through his time as Fellow at Emmanuel and end with him settled in the comfortable country rectory of Thurcaston in Leicestershire. Hurd had a wide circle of correspondents. He became a close friend of William Warburton, Bishop of Gloucester, perhaps the most prominent controverialist of the period. He was also a member of a literary circle which included the poets Thomas Gray and William Mason. Indeed, Hurd himself is well-known to students of English literatureas the author of Letters on Chivalry and Romanceand as a significant figure among the so-called `pre-romantics'. Hurd's letters reveal the full range of his interests, from theology and university politics, through literature, to painting and sculpture. This edition, therefore, not only tells us about Hurd's early life and career, but also provides a valuable insight into the social life of the Anglican clergy in the eighteenth century.

Reprint of the original, first published in 1875.

Reprint of the original, first published in 1875.