Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611

  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
MR Simson's Knotty Case: Divinity, Politics, and Due Process in Early Eighteenth-Century Scotland

MR Simson's Knotty Case: Divinity, Politics, and Due Process in Early Eighteenth-Century Scotland

Skoczylas, Anne

Hardcover

Series: McGill-Queen's Studies in the History of Ideas, Book 31

General ChristianityGeneral World HistoryBritish History

Currently unavailable to order

ISBN10: 077351029X
ISBN13: 9780773510296
Publisher: McGill-Queen's University Press
Published: Jan 19 2001
Pages: 416
Weight: 1.70
Height: 1.50 Width: 6.20 Depth: 9.10
Language: English

In Mr Simson's Knotty Case Anne Skoczylas examines the heresy trials of John Simson, professor of Divinity at Glasgow University from 1708-40. Accused of teaching unsound doctrine, Simson retained his position after mild censure in 1717 but was eventually suspended from teaching and preaching after a second set of charges was brought against him in the ecclesiastical courts in the late 1720s.

The issues involved in these trials included the right of universities to discipline their professors, the degree of political control over the appointment and methodology of teachers, the preservation of factional advantage through such appointments, and the nature of the relationship between a state church and the public institutions responsible for educating its clergy. Skoczylas shows that the effect of the Enlightenment on Scottish Calvinism, which required adaptation to new developments in theology and pedagogy, was an important sub-text to the trials: the compromise reached at the end of the second led indirectly to the first secession of ultra-orthodox ministers from the Church of Scotland. More significantly, the Church became increasingly open to innovative thought so that enlightened ministers of the latter half of the century could debate matters forbidden to Simson.

Mr Simson's Knotty Case breaks new ground, offering the first analysis of many ecclesiastical and political sources. Skoczylas shows that although Simson was in many ways a conservative man, despite his innovative pedagogy, the liberalizing effects of his cases thrust Scotland from the obscurity of Covenanting orthodoxy into the clarity of the Enlightenment.

Also in

British History

View All