Constance Leavitt Hanson

Political action as religious duty Constance Leavitt Hanson

This expose of John Preston's political activism in England against what the author has termed "international Catholicism" in the court of James I between the year 1611 and 1628, draws on external evidence in the testimony of Preston's biographer Thomas Ball and on internal evidence provided by Preston's sermons themselves. It concludes with a brilliant comparative study of Preston's ideas compared with those of analytical psychologist Carl Jung and Harvard philosopher William Ernest Hocking. The author uses observations on puritanism by Perry Miller in support of her contention that for Preston political activism was a religious duty. The appendices include extensive excerpts from Preston's sermons Exact Walking, The Church's Marriage, The New Life, and The Pillar and Ground of Truth, copied by hand among many others from the rare book collection at Widener Library at Harvard University by the author in the summer of 1960.