Download or read book The Paul's Cross Sermons 1534-1642 written by Millar MacLure and published by . This book was released on 1958-12-15 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The outdoor sermon, addressed to all estates in a place of public assembly, is a medieval institution of great historical importance. In this book I have set out to describe how that institution was transformed by political devices and theological conflict during and after the English Reformation. The Paul's Cross pulpit was as familiar and intimate a monumnent of pre-Cromwellian London as Nelson's column in the London of these days. The most serious issues affecting the destiny of England as she gradually separated herself from purely European relationships to assume a new existence as an Atlantic Protestant power were proclaimed and argued from that pulpit. There the pastors rebuked worldliness and proclaimed the acceptable day of the Lord; there they exercised their best powers of persuasion according to the traditional rules of rhetoric, and thundered their way into literary history. I have sought to describe and co-ordinate these various aspects of the Paul's Cross sermons. -- Preface.