English Hypothetical Universalism

The last two decades have seen nothing short of a renaissance of interest in the theological world of the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It is against this background of nuanced studies of the period that Jonathan Moore’s outstanding monograph is to be understood. Where Muller and Milton have laid out their detailed arguments on a broad canvas, Moore has focused in detail on the particular individual John Preston as a means of exploring issues surrounding the development of English Reformed Orthodoxy during the Elizabethan and Jacobean periods. The results are significant contributions to a number of debates in the current historiography. This book should be required reading not just for the scholar, but to any who have an active interest in the Reformed tradition, not as a blueprint for restoring “the old paths,’ but as an example of how one great Puritan pastor wrestled with the interface of theology and practice.