Praise Disjoined: Changing Patterns of Salvation in 17th-Century English Literature

Growing skepticism and rationalism contributed to the decline of religious enthusiasm in England in the seventeenth century, and time-honored notions about salvation and damnation became increasingly vitiated by secular, pragmatic concerns. This important collection of essays investigates the ways important writers of the age forcefully renegotiated their understanding of the terms of salvation and damnation, either affirming the old or accomodating some new understanding. After the Puritan Revolution had run its course, the end of the century witnessed a new consensus, one more deferential to individualism, utilitarianism, and secular millenarianism than to the hierarchical orders inherent in Christian feudalism and monarchy.