A critical presentation of the writings of John Wesley has long been needed, especially in view of the quickened interest in him and his ecumenical churchmanship. This edition is planned to consist of thirty-four volumes including all of Wesley's original or mainly original prose works--his letters, sermons, journals and diaries as well as his specifically doctrinal writings. The final volumes will contain a bibliography of the works of John and Charles Wesley and a General Index. The text for this edition represents Wesley's thought in its fullest and most deliberate expression. All substantive variant readings are noted in appendixes, and introductions and footnotes elucidate the text.

This volume, containing The Appeals to Men of Reason and Religion, is the first to be published. The aim of Wesley's Appeals was to correct current misconceptions of his movement. In the course of refuting attacks upon himself, Wesley also presented a positive statement of his theological and ecclesiastical position. Yet the attacks continued. This volume contains also his open letters replying to Edmund Gibson, Bishop of Exeter, and to William Warburton, Bishop of Gloucester.

Originally published in 1964, this book examines the influence of reason and authority upon English thought in the eighteenth century. The text relates these two concepts to movements in religious and political thought, beginning with Locke's views on faith and reason before going through various areas and finishing with the beginnings of Romanticism. The age of the Enlightenment is seen as constituted, on the one hand, by an attempt to relate all significant intellectual movements to reason and, on the other, an attempt to devise proper restraints on the authority of reason. This book will be of value to anyone with an interest in philosophy, social and political thought, and eighteenth-century English history.

Under Cromwell Puritanism had dominated the whole of English life. With his death and the collapse of the Commonwealth there was an immediate change. In this 1957 work, Dr Cragg has written a detailed history of Puritanism in this period. He begins with a general historical study of the political background of religious persecution. He then illustrates the ways in which pressure was exerted and the motives for it; he shows that ideological persecution has changed little. The last chapter summarises the situation on eve of toleration. This is a scholarly work; but it will be read by many who are not historians because the issues which it discusses are not dead, because it is the kind of history in which the reader feels himself invoked in the stress of the conflict, and because men like Baxter and Bunyan come alive in writings which Dr Cragg knows well and quotes richly.