The Allurer of the Soul: The Holy Spirit in Puritan Preaching

Abstract

Conforming English clergy during the Elizabethan period critiqued Puritan preaching for attempting to manipulate their auditors emotionally. Here, one might think of the preface to Richard Hooker’s Lawes of Ecclesiastical Polity, where he accused Puritans of propagating Presbyterianism by the means of a duplicitous multiphase plan. First, Presbyterians stirred the emotions of their auditors against the perceived faults of the Church of England. Then, they positioned Presbyterianism as the remedy to the aforementioned transgressions. Finally, they fell back upon special revelation from the Holy Spirit as an explanation as to why Presbyterians alone correctly interpret Scripture.1 Puritans likely considered the conformist critique to grant entirely too much credit to their homiletical skills, but the final point of Hooker’s critique does get at a central axiom of Puritan preaching. Puritans, like William Perkins, placed the power of the Holy Spirit central in their estimate of efficacious preaching.KeywordsPastoral TheologyChurch FatherHoly GhostSpecial RevelationCentral AxiomThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.