Weak Christians, Backsliders, and Carnal Gospelers: Assurance of Salvation and the Pastoral Origins of Puritan Practical Divinity in the 1580s

The great pearl of Reformed piety, assurance of salvation, eluded Richard Rogers, Essex presbyterian activist, in theearly 1580s. Rogers “languished long” in “unsettledness in my life” “untill wofull experience” drove him to search out a more reliable method of obtaining a steady assurance. He decided that only a steady, highly reflective, and rigorous course of life could keep assurance constant. To that end, Rogers devised “a more certain manner of direction for me through the daie and the weeke.” His new method combined continual selfreminders of God's blessings with strict activities of piety and selfscrutiny, and through it, he found the settled peace he had been seeking.