Twisse, William: [Cotton, John]:

$6,500 · Offered by William Reese Company

A TREATISE OF MR. COTTONS, CLEARING CERTAINE DOUBTS CONCERNING PREDESTINATION. TOGETHER WITH AN EXAMINATION THEREOF.... A refutation, written by the English theologian William Twisse, of a manuscript treatise on the subject of predestination, penned by the Puritan minister John Cotton several years before his arrival in New England, where he would become one of the Massachusetts Bay Colony's leading ministers. Cotton's manuscript treatise on predestination was written about the year 1625 while he was still minister at St. Botolph's Church in Boston, Lincolnshire, England. As literary historian Everett Emerson explains, "Cotton set forth his views in writing for the benefit of a neighboring minister, and this work then circulated in manuscript for many years. In 1633 Wiliam Twisse, a Perkinsian theologian, had the opportunity to read the work and to prepare a refutation, which Cotton saw before he left that year for New England." In his refutation, Twisse argues "that Cotton's views," as expressed in his manuscript treatise, come "dangerously close to the Arminian heresy" (DNB). Sargent Bush, editor of the definitive edition of Cotton's correspondence, notes that both Cotton's treatise and Twisse's reply "remained in manuscript another thirteen years after that. Finally, when Twisse was serving as moderator of the Westminster Assembly, and just a year before his death, his work appeared with the title A Treatise of Mr Cottons, Clearing Certaine Doubts concerning Predestination

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