A Protestant Vision
William Harrison and the Reformation of Elizabethan England

This book sets an Elizabethan intellectual's worldview in the broader context of European Protestant thought.

G. J. R. Parry (Author)

9780521522182, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 22 August 2002

360 pages
23 x 15.2 x 2.4 cm, 0.586 kg

'Cambridge are to be congratulated for reprinting this work fifteen years after its publication. A Protestant Vision demands to be read, even if one is not specifically interested in Harrision or in the progress of the English Reformation after John Bale. … A Protestant Vision is a fine work that makes important contributions to intellectual, religious and political history. Indeed, its singluar achievement is to link these often disparate subjects together making it impossible to study the Reformation in isolation form early modern science or any debates on early modern political formations.' Institute of Historical Research

This book deals with the thought of William Harrison, a well-known Elizabethan intellectual, whose ideas are significant chiefly because they are often representative of the thoroughgoing Protestantism which adapted continental reformed ideas to the circumstances of Tudor England. The book explains how the mentality of Harrison, a university-trained Protestant, reveals a coherent worldview based upon a particular view of history which he applied to many areas of contemporary concern: the complete reformation of the church, the improvement of society, the removal of economic injustice, the reorientation of practical life and the restraint of the dangerous speculation current in natural philosophy. Dr Parry draws upon a unique and previously unknown manuscript source, Harrison's interpretation of world history, which provides unusually detailed information about how one individual interpreted the world.

Preface
Part I. A Protestant Vision of History: 1. The two churches
2. A reformed chronology - patterns and parallels
3. A reformed chronology - interpreting the prophecies
Part II. A Protestant Vision of England: 4. A reformed church
5. A reformed Prince
6. A reformed commonwealth
7. A reformed natural philosophy
Index.

Subject Areas: Early modern history: c 1450/1500 to c 1700 [HBLH], British & Irish history [HBJD1]