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Religion & Republic: Christian America from the Founding to the Civil War

In recent years, America’s status as a “Christian nation” has become an incredibly vexed question. This is not simply a debate about America’s present, or even its future–it has become a debate about its past. Some want to rewrite America’s history as having always been highly secular in order to ensure a similar future; others seek to reframe the American founding as a continuation of medieval Christendom in the hopes of reviving America’s religious identity today.

In this book, Miles Smith offers a fresh historical reading of America’s status as a Christian nation in the Early Republic era. Defined neither by secularism nor Christendom, America was instead marked by “Christian institutionalism.” Christianity–and Protestantism specifically–was always baked into the American republic’s diplomatic, educational, judicial, and legislative regimes and institutional Christianity in state apparatuses coexisted comfortably with disestablishment from the American Revolution until the beginning of the twenty-first century.

Any productive discussion about America’s religious present or future must first reckon accurately with its past. With close attention to a wide range of sermons, letters, laws, court cases and more, Religion & Republic offers just such a reckoning.

Life on the Silent Planet: Essays on Christian Living from C.S. Lewis’s Ransom Trilogy

Advent Homilies

Saint Augustine of Hippo (354-430) is one of the titans of church history. Works such as his Confessions and On the Trinity have earned him a place as one of “the Doctors of the Church,” responsible for shaping and defending Christian doctrine throughout the centuries.

Yet Augustine was also pastor. Week by week, year by year, he shepherded his flock by preaching to them the Good News. In this short collection, readers will find seventeen Advent homilies in which Augustine expounded from his pulpit the wonders of Christ’s incarnation for the everyday Christians in his congregation. Combining profound theological wisdom, sharp scriptural insight, and challenging practical application, these homilies are brief but rich meditations on the person of Christ—the Eternal Day who stepped into our darkness, the Bridegroom who came forth from his chamber, the Truth who sprung out of the earth.

If you are longing for Christ this Advent season, these homilies will present him to you afresh from an array of surprising passages.

Richard Hooker on Natural Theology

Evangelical Protestants enthusiastically affirm the “sufficiency of Scripture” for the Christian faith. But how does this doctrine square with the church’s long tradition of “natural theology” which teaches that a surprising amount can be known about God from nature and reason alone?

In this short but incisive book, David Hainess demonstrates how the great English Reformer, Richard Hooker (1554-1600), answered this pivotal question. Usually, Hooker is associated with the questions of natural law and ethics rather than natural theology and the doctrine of God. However, Haines shows that a firm grasp of natural theology underpins Hooker’s teaching on natural law, and that the latter cannot be had without the former. In doing so, he provides not merely a survey of Hooker’s thought, but, via Hooker, a concise and lucid introduction to the whole topic of natural theology and a compelling defense against its biblicist critics.

The Word Made Flesh for Us

In this fifth volume of a multi-year translation project by the Davenant Institute, we present key sections from Book V of Hooker’s Laws, in which Hooker thoroughly yet succinctly lays out the Reformed yet catholic perspective on both Christology and the sacraments. Long regarded as both the theological and rhetorical high point of the Laws, these chapters provide a survey of the church’s historic teaching on the person of Christ and our union with him, as well as an irenic defense of Reformed distinctives over against the Catholic, Lutheran, and anti-sacramental alternatives.

Yet this is no dry theological tract: Hooker’s descriptions of Christ, baptism, and especially the eucharist are among the most stirring passages penned during the English Reformation. Book V of the Laws is as valuable today as it was when first written for the edification of the church, the sharpening of the mind, and the enrichment of the soul.

A Treatise on Christian Moderation

Political and religious convictions, strongly held, are tearing families, communities, and slowly the whole country apart. The men with the most extreme personalities seem to rise to the top, while those urging moderation are mocked and sidelined.

This may sound like the present day–but it refers to England in the run-up to the Civil War in 1642. As the nation rolled towards a conflict which would claim tens of thousands of lives, Bishop Joseph Hall (1574-1656) called on his countrymen to exercise an unglamorous yet vital Christian virtue: moderation. Hall, one of the English representatives at the Council of Dort, was branded “our English Seneca” for his intellectual abilities. These abilities are on full display in this work as he musters Scripture, philosophy, and history into a comprehensive commendation of the virtue of moderation.

In this new edition of A Treatise on Christian Moderation, with extensive footnotes and a scholarly introduction, readers can rediscover a forgotten treasure of Protestant wisdom. Hall’s call for personal and public moderation was tragically ignored in his time. In our own increasingly immoderate age, may this work finally find the hearing it deserves.

On Original Sin

On Original Sin represents the first installment of a new project to translate the Loci into English for the first time since 1583, Presented here in a clear, readable, and learned translation, Vermigli’s searching discussion of original sin reveals the biblical and patristic foundations of this controversial doctrine, and its centrality to Protestant orthodoxy. Along the way, Vermigli offers a scathing critique of the semi-Pelagian Catholic theologian Albert Pighius and defends the Augustinian understanding of sin and grace, in a treatise marked by exegetical skill, historical erudition, and philosophical sophistication.

On Free Will and the Law

Appearing now in English for the first time since 1583, On Free Will and the Law represents Part II, Ch. 2 and 3 of the Loci Communes of Peter Martyr Vermigli. Presented here in a clear, readable, and learned translation, we first have Vermigli’s deft treatment of the thorny issue of free will. Demonstrating clearly his peerless erudition and subtle mind, Vermigli simultaneously upholds the the fallen will’s enslavement to sin and freedom to act. Likewise, Vermigli’s considerably more brief exposition of the catholic doctrine of the Law alongside his criticisms of Manichean and Pelagian errors is a helpful summary of Protestant teaching on this issue. With the Scriptures as his final authority, the Church Fathers as his guides, and philosophy as his handmaid, Vermigli produced Loci that withstand the rigors of time and remain a helpful guide to Protestants everywhere.

On Providence and the Cause of Sin

Appearing now in English for the first time since 1583, On Providence and the Cause of Sin is the next installment in Davenant Press’s ongoing translation of the Loci Communes of Peter Martyr Vermigli. Presented here in a clear, readable, and learned translation, we first have Vermigli’s treatment of the topic of providence, accompanied by related questions on God’s control over both the Fall and temptation to sin. With his characteristic rigor, Vermigli provides a masterful Reformed articulation of the relationship between necessity, contingency, and God’s sovereignty. With the Scriptures as his final authority, the Church Fathers as his guides, and philosophy as his handmaid, Vermigli produced Loci that withstand the rigors of time and remain a helpful guide to Protestants everywhere.