'Practical Divinity': The Works and Life of Revd Richard Greenham by Kenneth L. Parker and Eric J. Carlson (review)

BOOK REVIEWS629 ranza, he brings out the reasons for it. The book thus sheds much light not only on the Spain of Philip II—who is shown as far from being an absolute monarch —but on the differences between the dominant Spanish theologians of the day and those outside Spain—including Pius V—who clearly wanted the new Catechism to be available to all those capable of understanding it. J. N. Hillgarth Pontifical Institute ofMediaeval Studies, Emeritus 'Practical Divinity': The Works and Life ofRevd Richard Greenham. By Kenneth L. Parker and Eric J. Carlson. [St. Andrews Studies in Reformation History ] (Aldershot, Hampshire, and Brookfield, Vermont: Ashgate. 1998. Pp. xiv, 395. $102.95.) Richard Greenham belonged to the first generation of Elizabethan Puritan nonconformist divines,famous in his own day not for his nonconformity, which he minimized and excused to his bishop, Richard Cox, but rather as one of the early physicians of the soul. He left his fellowship at Cambridge University in 1570 for the nearby small village of Dry Drayton, where he ministered for twenty years, leaving only in the last years of his life to preach in London. Although he published almost nothing during his busy life as preacher and pastor, he was well known in his own day largely because his household became a kind of seminary for young Cambridge divines in need of training in the practicalities of ministering to a parochial living before they went on to benefices of their own; among them were such Puritan luminaries of the next generation as Arthur Hildersham, Richard Rogers, and Henry Smith. In this second generation Hildersham, William Whateley John Dod, Thomas Gataker, Charles Offspring, and others all trained in their homes a third generation of godly preachers; Greenham's was an infectious as well as efficacious example . After Greenham's death in London in 1594, his London colleagues and scattered disciples began to pull together collections of his sayings, "Grave Counsels , and Godlie Observations," and his posthumous works were then published in a series of editions by three prominent London Puritans, Thomas Crook, Henry Holland, and Stephen Egerton between 1599 and 1612, when the fifth and last edition was published. In addition to their lengthy introduction to Greenham's life and work, Kenneth Parker and Eric Carlson have included in this volume Rylands English Manuscript 124, a collection of Greenham's sayings which his protégés noted and which is closely paralleled by the printed works. What the Puritans preached we know,for sermons we have in plenty, but these sayings even at second hand give a unique insight into the problems and anxieties of parishioners and others who came to Greenham, as a physician of the soul, and the comment, counsel, and advice he dispensed in the course of his pastoral duties. Parker and Carlson have also included from Greenham's 630BOOK REVIEWS printed works his important "A Short Forme of Catechizing," which, if incomplete , nevertheless runs in print to more than thirty pages of questions and answers , Greenham's treatises on marriage contracts, on the education of children, on the proper way to read and understand the Scriptures, and an abbreviated version of his treatise on the sabbath. Although Parker's and Carlson's reason for refusing to term Greenham a Puritan do not seem convincing—not least because they do repeatedly refer to his role in the 'godly' community and to his sayings as reflecting the preoccupations of the 'godly' in the early 1580's—we have no excuse now to ignore the pastoral thrust of Elizabethan Puritanism, hitherto overshadowed by the more public controversies generated by the presbyterian movement and by such famous preachers and scholars as Edward Dering and William Perkins. Paul S. Seaver Stanford University The Reformation ofCommunity: Social Welfare and Calvinist Charity in Holland , 1572-1620. By Charles H. Parker. [Cambridge Studies in Early Modern History.] (New York: Cambridge University Press. 1998. Pp. xv, 221. $59.95.) The deacons of the ancient church, wrote Calvin in his Institutes, were stewards of the poor, and as such they did not undertake mere "secular management" but rather exercised a "spiritual function dedicated to God." A generation later, Calvin's spiritual heirs...