Godly Learning
Puritan Attitudes towards Reason, Learning and Education, 1560–1640

John Morgan (Author)

9780521357005, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 31 March 1988

380 pages
22.8 x 15.2 x 2.4 cm, 0.615 kg

'Among the books which have proliferated in the past two decades, John Morgan's study of the English Puritan view of learning and education is especially welcome for its clarity, scholarship, and utilisation of recent research … the student interested in the English Puritan 'mind' can do no better than begin with Morgan's book'. History of Education

Godly Learning attempts to establish the relationship which Puritans worked out between faith and reason in the eighty years before the Civil War. This was a period of rapid expansion of educational facilities, of a clash between humanist values of the Renaissance and the fideism of the Reformation, and of confrontations between traditionalist (primarily Aristotelian) approaches to knowledge and the more experimental path signalled by Bacon. Taking an existential approach to the question of meaning, Puritans sought their solution in the development of a covenant theology based on a life of active faith. They argued vehemently that natural reason was incapable of finding the path to salvation and only faith could regenerate reason to its proper capabilities. At the same time, Puritans emphasised the value of learning for comprehension of Scripture and preparation of sermons. Starting with a fresh approach to the question of defining Puritans, Godly Learning proceeds to delineate the infrequently studied puritan mentalité which informed the better-known public political and ecclesiological positions. Not since the work of Perry Miller has there been such a thorough attempt to comprehend the Puritan view of reason, and the implications of that view.

Preface
Introduction
1. The problem of definition
2. Religion and the godly life
3. The limits and proper uses of human reason
4. The dangers of learning
5. The role and status of ministers
6. A learned ministry
7. The use of learning in the pulpit
8. The godly household
9. Reform of the schools
10. Schoolmasters
11. The reform of higher education
12. The institutionalization of reform
13. The individualization of reform
Conclusion
Bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: Social & cultural history [HBTB]