Sermons

Abstract

It has been estimated that over 10,000 sermons appeared on booksellers’ shelves from the mid-seventeenth to the mid-eighteenth century. This chapter uses fast-day sermons from 1640 to 1714 as a representative case study of sermon literature during this period. Though this is only one subgenre of sermons, it is a useful and effective approach for several reasons: it provides a greater depth of analysis across a unified type of work; it considers a wide range of authors; finally, the period begins with a set of fast sermons that many scholars are already familiar with—those preached during the Long Parliament—and allows comparisons to be made between and among these Civil War examples of the form and those from the Interregnum, Restoration, Williamite, and early Augustan periods. The impact of political, social, intellectual, and cultural influences on sermons, as well as their religious purposes, are particularly evident in fast-day sermons.