The Marrow is the historically important book that caused the Marrow Controversy in the Church of Scotland. The Marrow is written as a dialogue among a pastor, a legalist, an antinomian, and a neophyte Christian. It advocates a free grace gospel against both a works-righteousness gospel and a cheap-grace gospel. At the time that Boston's edition came out (circa 1720), the Moderate Party dominated the Church of Scotland, and advocated a legalistic or neonomian gospel. Thus the free-grace perspective of the Marrow was condemned, and its maintainers, the so-called Marrowmen, were deposed from the ministry. The deposed ministers formed the Associate Presbytery, nicknamed the Secession Church. More information can be found in History Of The Secession Church (1839) and The Erskines: Ebenezer And Ralph (1880). In spite of the accusations of antinomianism, the book clearly advocates a role for the Law in sanctification, though not in justification, a dual-covenant view of the Law, as a covenant of grace to the elect, but a covenant of works to the reprobate.

The 18th century was a wealth of knowledge, exploration and rapidly growing technology and expanding record-keeping made possible by advances in the printing press. In its determination to preserve the century of revolution, Gale initiated a revolution of its own: digitization of epic proportions to preserve these invaluable works in the largest archive of its kind. Now for the first time these high-quality digital copies of original 18th century manuscripts are available in print, making them highly accessible to libraries, undergraduate students, and independent scholars.The Age of Enlightenment profoundly enriched religious and philosophical understanding and continues to influence present-day thinking. Works collected here include masterpieces by David Hume, Immanuel Kant, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, as well as religious sermons and moral debates on the issues of the day, such as the slave trade. The Age of Reason saw conflict between Protestantism and Catholicism transformed into one between faith and logic -- a debate that continues in the twenty-first century.++++The below data was compiled from various identification fields in the bibliographic record of this title. This data is provided as an additional tool in helping to insure edition identification: ++++British LibraryT095425Fisher's authorship is sometimes disputed.Berwick: printed for W. Phorson; and for B. Law, London, 1781. 2v.; 12

An attractively laid out edition of the Christian classic with explanatory notes from well-known puritan Thomas Boston An intriguing book, quite unlike any other The Marrow of Modern Divinity defies pigeon-holing. It was written in the 1600s by an author of whom we know little, yet it proved to be a critically important and controversial theological text. Penned as dialogue between a minister (Evangelista), a young Christian (Neophytus), a legalist (Nomista) who believes Christianity is a set of rules to be obeyed and Antinomista who thinks it's okay to sin because God will forgive him anyway, it makes for a wonderfully insightful book that remains tremendously relevant for our world today. This newly laid out and eagerly awaited edition includes explanatory notes by the famous puritan Thomas Boston, an introduction by Philip Ryken and an historical introduction by William Vandoodewaard.