A rare Interregnum folio attacking Calvinist predestination: Thomas Pierce’s collected defences of divine justice and human responsibility, 1658.

PIERCE, Thomas The Christians Rescue from the Grand Error of the Heathen (Touching the Fatal Necessity of All Events) and the Dismal Consequences Thereof, Which Have Slily Crept into the Church. In Several Defences of Some Notes, Writ to Vindicate the Primitive and Scriptural Doctrine of God’s Decrees. By Thomas Pierce, Rector of Brington in Northamptonshire.

London: Printed by J. G. for Richard Royston, at the Angel in Ivy-lane, 1658.

Thick quarto (8 × 6 × 3 inches).

A rare and exceptionally important Interregnum collection of five theological polemics by Thomas Pierce, addressing the doctrine of divine decrees, reprobation, free will, and the moral character of God. The volume stands as one of the most sustained English critiques of high Calvinist predestinarianism produced during the mid-seventeenth century.

This is a publisher-issued collected reissue of five separately printed tracts, gathered under a newly printed general title page and preliminaries:

1. A Correct Copy of Some Notes Concerning God’s Decrees, Especially of Reprobation (1658; Wing P2172)

2. The Divine Philanthropie Defended (1658; Wing P2179)

3. The Divine Purity Defended (1659; Wing P2080A; second edition)

4. Heautontimōroumenos, or, The Self-Revenger Exemplified in Mr. William Barlee (1658; Wing P2181)

5. Autokatakrisis, or, Self-Condemnation (1658; Wing P2164)

As noted by ESTC, a printed instruction leaf at A4v directs the order of binding and provides tables of contents for each of the five component works, making clear that these tracts were deliberately conceived as a single integrated theological defence of Pierce’s evolving doctrine of divine grace and human responsibility.

Thick quarto. Collation complete as per ESTC:
[20], 74, [6], 148, 64, [8], [16], 133, [3], [24], 163, [1], [24], 31 [1], 212, [8] pp.
Each of the five works retains its own dated title page, pagination, and register. One or two paper flaws; two small holes and repairs in the upper margins of a few leaves, not affecting text. Some browning and light marking; otherwise a good to very good, wide-margined copy.

Bound in later leather over original boards, over raised bands, with gilt lettering to spine. A solid, complete, and textually excellent example of a very scarce and historically central volume in the English predestination controversy.

Thomas Pierce (1622-1691) was a prominent and controversial English Evangelical divine, best known for his gradual and highly public departure from strict Calvinist predestinarian theology during the Interregnum. Educated at Magdalen College, Oxford, he became rector of Brington, Northamptonshire, where he developed a reputation as a learned and independent-minded preacher.

Originally a Calvinist, Pierce came to reject the doctrine of absolute reprobation and the fatalistic implications of rigid predestination. In 1655 he publicly articulated a revised theology in which he argued that sin arises from human will rather than divine decree, while all good in humanity proceeds from God’s special grace. This placed him closer to the moderate Arminian and “Evangelical” theology of John Goodwin.

Pierce’s views provoked fierce controversy and a cascade of polemical exchanges with Calvinist opponents, notably William Barlee. The present volume collects Pierce’s principal defences of his position and his counter-attacks on his critics, forming one of the fullest English statements of anti-predestinarian theology produced before the Restoration.

After 1660 Pierce conformed to the restored Church of England and later became Dean of Salisbury. His career exemplifies the theological fluidity and experimental doctrinal climate of the Civil War and Interregnum period.