A Compleat Body of Divinity, a collection of 250 lectures by the American divine Samuel Willard published in 1726, is the most comprehensive and systematic exposition of Puritan theology written in the Colonies. A long and difficult treatise, it is nearly unreadable to modern students. In this book Ernest Lowrie explicates Willard's theology in clear and contemporary language. In doing so he reveals Willard as far more than the dry, orthodox Puritan preacher he has too often been considered. The Boston minister emerges as a thinker of imagination and sensitivity, deeply concerned not only with traditional dogma on predestination and scriptural authority but also with the nature of human happiness.
Willard asked how man could find his integrity and a sense of well-being. In answering this question Willard summed up the moral judgments that were meaningful for his time and anticipated the work of Jonathan Edwards. Thus Professor Lowrie's analysis illuminates not only the mind of Willard but the significant transition of Puritanism at the end of the seventeenth century. Bearing directly on the study of American intellectual history as well as on American religion and Reformation and Puritan studies, this study will become an indispensable help to students who want to understand the intellectual and religious climate in America on the eve of the Enlightenment.
Ernest Benson Lowrie is assistant professor of religious studies at The Pennsylvania State University.- (At the time of writing).
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