Forty Centuries of Christian Writing

The Cherubinic Wanderer

Der Cherubinische Wandersmann

Angelus Silesius · 1624–1677

Sixteen hundred rhymed couplets of mystical paradox — the rose is without why, and God would perish if the poet ceased to be.

Of Communion with God

John Owen · 1616–1683

Distinct communion with the Father in love, the Son in grace, and the Spirit in comfort — an experiential trinitarian theology rather than an abstract one.

The Great Didactic

Jan Amos Comenius · 1592–1670

A complete art of teaching all things to all people, proposing universal schooling for girls and boys, in the vernacular, in graded stages, without beating.

The London Polyglot Bible

Brian Walton and colleagues · c. 1600–1661

The Bible in nine languages in parallel columns — Hebrew, Samaritan, Aramaic, Greek, Latin, Syriac, Arabic, Ethiopic, Persian — with a critical apparatus of variants.

The Savoy Declaration

The Congregational churches of England

Westminster doctrine with a congregational polity — each gathered church complete in itself, with no authority above it but Christ.

The World in Pictures

Orbis Sensualium Pictus

Jan Amos Comenius · 1592–1670

A picture book teaching Latin and the world together, with numbered images of trades, animals, and the soul, each keyed to a numbered phrase.

The Whole Duty of Man

Anonymous

A course of practical instruction on duty to God, self, and neighbour, divided into seventeen sections to be read through three times a year.

The Interior Christian

Jean de Bernières · 1602–1659

The spiritual letters of a lay treasurer of Normandy who funded missions to Canada and directed a circle of contemplatives from his own house.

An Explanation of the Grand Mystery of Godliness

Henry More · 1614–1687

A defence of Christianity against both atheism and enthusiasm, arguing that reason and a purified imagination together lead to a rational and moderate faith.

On Christian Doctrine

De Doctrina Christiana

John Milton · 1608–1674

A private systematic theology arguing from scripture alone, and arriving at a subordinationist view of the Son, mortalism of the soul, and the lawfulness of polygamy.

The Book of Common Prayer of 1662

The Church of England

The restoration prayer book, essentially Cranmer's with small revisions, imposed by an Act of Uniformity that ejected some two thousand ministers who would not use it.

Logic, or the Art of Thinking

La Logique de Port-Royal

Antoine Arnauld and Pierre Nicole

A logic textbook that treats ideas, judgement, reasoning, and method, and introduces probability into the discussion of belief for the first time.

The Massachusett Bible

Mamusse Wunneetupanatamwe Up-Biblum God

John Eliot with Cockenoe, Job Nesutan, and James Printer · 1604–1690

The whole Bible translated into an Algonquian language and printed at Cambridge, Massachusetts, by a team in which the Native collaborators did much of the work.

The Life of Vincent de Paul

Louis Abelly · 1604–1691

The first life of Vincent, written four years after his death by a colleague with access to the archives of his congregations.

Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners

John Bunyan · 1628–1688

A tinker's account of years of torment over whether he had committed the unforgivable sin, with texts of scripture striking him like blows.

Women's Speaking Justified

Margaret Fell · 1614–1702

A scriptural argument that women may preach — from the women at the tomb, from Priscilla, and from the claim that in Christ there is neither male nor female.

The Acts of the Great Moscow Council

The Council of Moscow

The council that deposed Patriarch Nikon, confirmed his liturgical corrections, and anathematised those who kept the old rites and the two-fingered cross.

Paradise Lost

John Milton · 1608–1674

The revolt of the angels, the creation, and the fall, written to justify the ways of God to men — and giving Satan the best speeches in the process.

No Cross, No Crown

William Penn · 1644–1718

Written in the Tower of London: an attack on worldly pride, titles, luxury, and hat honour, with a long anthology of testimonies against them.

Theological-Political Treatise

Tractatus Theologico-Politicus

Baruch Spinoza · 1632–1677

An argument that scripture must be interpreted by its own history and language alone, that Moses did not write the Pentateuch, and that the state should leave belief free.

The Mystical City of God

María de Ágreda · 1602–1665

A life of the Virgin Mary received in visions, running to thousands of pages and filling in every silence of the gospels with detail.

Pensées

Pensées

Blaise Pascal · 1623–1662

Notes for an unfinished defence of Christianity, found after the mathematician's early death: the wretchedness and greatness of humanity, the hiddenness of God, the wager, and the heart's reasons that reason does not know.

Centuries of Meditations

Thomas Traherne · c. 1636–1674

Meditations on the goodness of creation and the recovery of a child's vision, in which the corn is orient and immortal wheat that never should be reaped.

Indian Dialogues

John Eliot · 1604–1690

Model conversations for Native preachers to use with their own relatives, written to be practised — and giving the sceptical side arguments of real force.

Exposition of the Doctrine of the Catholic Church

Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet · 1627–1704

A statement of Catholic teaching phrased to remove Protestant misunderstandings, minimising the distance on justification, images, and the saints.

On the Laws of Nature

De Legibus Naturae

Richard Cumberland · 1631–1718

An answer to Hobbes arguing that the natural law is the pursuit of the common good of all rational beings, discoverable from the constitution of the world.

The Confession of Dositheus

The Synod of Jerusalem

A synodal confession rejecting Lucaris point by point and defining Orthodox teaching on scripture, the sacraments, and the church against Calvinism.

A Christian Directory

Richard Baxter · 1615–1691

A million words of practical cases of conscience covering private devotion, family life, church duties, contracts, lawsuits, servants, and trade.

The Life Written by Himself

Avvakum Petrov · 1620/21–1682

An Old Believer priest's account of exile in Siberia, his wife stumbling in the mud and asking how long it will go on, and his refusal to accept Nikon's corrected books.

Pious Desires

Pia Desideria

Philipp Jakob Spener · 1635–1705

Six proposals: small groups for scripture reading, the spiritual priesthood of all believers, practice over knowledge, kinder controversy, reformed clergy training, and edifying preaching.

The Spiritual Guide

Miguel de Molinos · 1628–1696

A method of interior quiet in which the soul ceases from acts and simply rests in God, leaving even meditation and petition behind.

The Helvetic Consensus Formula

The Swiss Reformed churches

A confession defending limited atonement against Saumur theology and asserting the inspiration of the Hebrew vowel points as part of the original text.

On the Principles of the Christian Religion

Lucy Hutchinson · 1620–1681

A treatise on Christian doctrine written for her daughter, working carefully through creation, providence, the fall, and redemption in the Calvinist order.

An Apology for the True Christian Divinity

Robert Barclay · 1648–1690

Fifteen propositions setting out Quaker belief systematically — the inward light, the universal saving seed, silent worship, and refusal of oaths and war.

The Pilgrim's Progress

John Bunyan · 1628–1688

Christian flees the City of Destruction with a burden on his back and travels through the Slough of Despond, Vanity Fair, and the Valley of the Shadow to the Celestial City — written largely in prison by an unlicensed preacher.

The True Intellectual System of the Universe

Ralph Cudworth · 1617–1688

A vast refutation of materialism and fatalism, arguing for plastic natures in the created world and quoting so much ancient atheism that some accused him of spreading it.

A Critical History of the Old Testament

Richard Simon · 1638–1712

A Catholic priest argues that the Hebrew text reached us through many hands and cannot be the sole rule of faith, since tradition is needed to establish it.

Order and Disorder

Lucy Hutchinson · 1620–1681

A verse meditation on Genesis from creation to the patriarchs, published anonymously and offering a markedly different account of Eve from Milton's.

The Life and Death of Mr Badman

John Bunyan · 1628–1688

The biography of a thoroughly bad man — a cheating tradesman and cruel husband — told as a conversation between two neighbours who knew him.

Discourse on Universal History

Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet · 1627–1704

World history written for the dauphin as a single providential design running from creation through Israel and Rome to the church of the present.