Traces the titanic conflict blow-by-blow from pre-Luther, through "The Flood," "The English Accident," and Calvin, showing the spiritual, military, political and financial struggles which had ended in a divided Europe by 1648. No educated person can ignore this book!

    Ms. Baldwin originally wrote the book in order, to show the intimate relation between the thought life of the New England minister and its affects on the political ideology expounded from the pulpit. From the introduction we get the author's purpose: "first, to make clear the similarity, the identity, of Puritan theology and fundamental political thought; second, to show how the New England clergy preserved, extended, and popularized the essential doctrines of political philosophy, thus making familiar to every church-going New Englander long before 1763 not only to the doctrines of natural right, the social contract, and the right of resistance, but also the fundamental principle of American constitutional law, that government, like its citizens, is bounded by law and when it transcends its authority it acts illegally." However, the study deals primarily with Nonconformists or Congregationalists and Presbyterians of the time. Covering the period from 100 years prior and up through the entire revolutionary era, she concludes that the central force behind it all was the pulpit’s application of the Word of God to politics and government. She says, “It must not be forgotten, in the multiplicity of authors mentioned, that the source of greatest authority and the one most commonly used was the Bible.” And she proves that “from the law of God they derived their political theories.”This reprint by American Vision is to make available this studied work in order to encourage the Church to be aware of its historic role in the founding of our Constitutional Republic. Where the pulpits used Biblical principles of rights, and "law of God" to make the case of freedom. Something now lost in our churches today that in many cases have been brought upon by the self-censor of the clergy themselves and in part Christians as a whole. Not to mention the parallel of today's loyalists to tyranny shouting, "Don't preach politics!" Originally published under Durham, North Carolina, Duke University Press in 1928. There have been other additions as late as 1965 under F. Ungar Pub. Co. in New York. Also, available in the latest formats from American Vision.Alice Mary Baldwin, Ph.D. (1879-1960)