Seers of God

Michael P. Winship is an associate professor of history at the University of Georgia.

Winship's sophisticated and compelling study of Puritan providentialism in Massachusetts during the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries examines the impact of cultural politics in Restoration England on New England's intellectual history and sheds new light on the ways in which Puritan thinkers responded to the imperatives of the early Enlightenment. William and Mary Quarterly This is an impressive book. It explores with subtlety one of those fascinating moments when the intricate connections between a certain kind of religious discourse shades into that outlook we connect with the Enlightenment, and discloses how rooted was the English Enlightenment in certain matters of theological discussion. As an exploration into a mentality, it is a test case in the analysis of 'Weberian disenchantment' and of a society struggling with cognitive disonance... Winship is especially strong in clarifying the political use of disenchantment and the political meaning of reason for Restoration Anglicans-seldom has a theological shift in its political context been so clearly delineated. -- Dewey D. Wallace, Jr. American Studies International