"The Digital Puritan" is a quarterly digest of helpful Puritan works. Each article is carefully edited and formatted to maximize readability. This edition contains the following articles: 1. Pray for Everything - David Clarkson. Clarkson shows how by praying, our weakness is made to draw upon his omnipotence. 2. How May We Attain to Love God With All Our Hearts, Souls, and Minds? - Samuel Annesley. Based on Matthew 22:37-38, this ...

Sitting in stillness, the practice of meditation, and the cultivation of awareness are commonly thought to be the preserves of Hindus and Buddhists. Martin Laird shows that the Christian tradition of contemplation has its own refined teachings on using a prayer word to focus the mind, working with the breath to cultivate stillness, and the practice of inner vigilance or awareness. But this book is not a mere historical survey of these teachings. In Into the Silent Land, we see the...

The early Christian Church was a chaos of contending beliefs. Some groups of Christians claimed that there was not one God but two or twelve or thirty. Some believed that the world had not been created by God but by a lesser, ignorant deity. Certain sects maintained that Jesus was human but not divine, while others said he was divine but not human. In Lost Christianities, Bart D. Ehrman offers a fascinating look at these early forms of Christianity and shows how they came to be suppressed,...

In Beyond Belief, renowned religion scholar Elaine Pagels continues her groundbreaking examination of the earliest Christian texts, arguing for an ongoing assessment of faith and a questioning of religious orthodoxy.Spurred on by personal tragedy and new scholarship from an international group of researchers, Pagels returns to her investigation of the “secret” Gospel of Thomas, and breathes new life into writings once thought heretical. As she arrives at an ever-de...

This is an account of the possesion of the nuns of Loudun. In 1634 the Ursuline nuns of Loudon were allegedly possessed by demons. This is one of the largest cases of mass possession in history. Father Urbain Grandier, a local priest, was interrogated under torture, convicted of being responsible for the possessions (as well as sorcery), and subsequently burned at the stake.

The first Western autobiography since Augustine's Confessions, the Monodies is set against the backdrop of the First Crusade and offers stunning insights into medieval society. As Guibert of Nogent intimately recounts his early years, monastic life, and the bloody uprising at Laon in 1112, we witness a world-and a mind-populated by royals, heretics, nuns, witches, and devils, and come to understand just how fervently he was preoccupied with sin, sexuality, the afterlife, ...

Traditional understandings of the genesis of the separation of church and state rest on assumptions about "Enlightenment" and the republican ethos of citizenship. In The Religious Roots of the First Amendment, Nicholas P. Miller does not seek to dislodge that interpretation but to augment and enrich it by recovering its cultural and discursive religious contexts--specifically the discourse of Protestant dissent. He argues that commitments by certain dissenting Protestants to the r...

J. A. Wylie (1808-1890) is considered by many to be one of the best religious historians of all time. While he penned many books during his lifetime, he is undoubtedly best known for this collection, The History of Protestantism. Originally published as 24 books in 1878, this series is available again either as single eBooks, or grouped into the original three volumes, just as the author intended. This great work begins with the first century A.D. and follows through to the...

The Bescancon (or Vescancon) Episode is the name given to the conflict between the Papacy and the Holy Roman Empire. Five letters from the Pope and Frederick Barbarossa are included.

This modern classic explores the key concepts and people who have shaped our Christian spiritual heritage.Concise and readable Holmes begins this introduction to Christian spirituality with the Jewish antecedents, and proceeds through the New Testament period, monasticism, the Middle Ages, Byzantine spirituality, and the modern period. Holmes ends his overview with key contemporary figures such as Simone Weil, Thomas Merton, and Martin Luther King, Jr. Brief biblio...

There was no neutral response to the announcement that the "enforcer"—Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger—had been elected Benedict XVI, the next pope of the Roman Catholic Church. Conservatives saw it as the final triumph of their agenda. Liberals were aghast. Everyone else wondered what to expect. Award-winning religion journalist David Gibson explores the "war of ideas" that will be a defining feature of this new papacy.Gibson persuasively argues that by tackling the modern world head-on ...

This manual was written as the course curriculum for home-study seminary students. It contains writing assignments for each of the 32 units. It also contains insights, images, and doctrines and principles to help students with their individual study.